


Ancient Enemy, a sequel to The Recreation of the Warrior (unfinished)

by twistedchick



Series: Pride of Warriors [2]
Category: Andromeda
Genre: Anasazi, Battle for Earth - Freeform, Chromatic Character, F/M, M/M, Multi, Nietzchean culture, Polygamy, Sequel, Space Opera, family life in space
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-19
Updated: 2014-03-19
Packaged: 2018-01-16 07:54:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 42,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1337845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twistedchick/pseuds/twistedchick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tyr and Harper go to ancient Earth to reclaim it from the Dragans, but not without a fight.  And family.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ancient Enemy, a sequel to The Recreation of the Warrior (unfinished)

It has been long centuries since one of my ancestors last touched ground on the planet from which all humans came.  
  
We have been taught that Dr. Paul Museveni, who created the Nietzschians on Fountainhead, visited Earth to seek out the best from each variety of human, and that he succeeded. No written records now exist of his travels; they were destroyed when Fountainhead itself was destroyed, centuries ago. All that remain are memories of stories, legends. If some zealous historian made copies of his records before Ayn Rand University went up in smoke and flame, before the genetic files that told of our origins and our first heritage vanished in the plunder, they too may be fragmentary; we have no way to know for sure.  
  
The scraps of these files exist in the records of All Systems University Library, according to Andromeda, but they are only bits and pieces of history, with the vaguest sense of what nations or tribes were involved. At that time when Earth was a free society, perhaps the notion of the perfectability of humanity was not met with the horror or disdain that Earth's unenhanced residents would give it today -- but they have spent centuries as slaves, moving targets, and disposable property under the rule of the Drago-Kazov Pride, so their opinion of enhanced humans is understandably biased.  
  
I am not as concerned with this particular branch of genetic information as I might be, in other circumstances. If I were afforded the leisure to search for the data, with the assistance of Andromeda or the Perseid librarians, I'm sure the geneticists in the prides allied with the Commonwealth would find it useful. Historically, we have had genetic sports crop up within our families that were unexpectedly brilliant or gifted in ways that were not always fully appreciated. It might be possible to learn exactly whose genes were being recombined in an unanticipated back cross to a previous ancestor.  
  
Brilliance is to be treasured; but it should not be accompanied by madness if it is possible to avoid it.  
  
For now, I hope that our visit to Earth will be one that will justify both Dylan's faith in Harper and myself and in his vision of the Commonwealth. Enforcing a treaty upon the remnant of Drago-Kazov here, regardless of Andromeda's size and weaponry, may be a little more difficult than he expects.  
  
And Harper expects even more than Dylan does. He expects us to liberate his homeland.  
  
I have seen enslaved homelands in the past, and as a mercenary I have fought on both sides of those battles. The issues were never simple, nor the results easy to attain.  
  
Yet I hope we may succeed, if for no other reason than that I want, for myself, to look upon the faces of those who slaughtered my family and pride long ago and sold me into slavery. I want them to see their failure. I have not only survived, but flourished. I come to Earth as the alpha of the renewed Kodiak Pride, with wives and children and a shieldbrother at my side, as well as the backing of the Commonwealth and my arch-duke Jaguar brother-in-law.  
  
I am no man's slave now.  
  


***

  
  
Had I veered from the proper path of fate when I survived my family's massacre, and had to live with no support or counsel from the pride? Had I become something other than a proper Nietzschian when I allied myself with the fate of humans and aliens aboard the Andromeda? As I considered most of the other Nietzschians I had met up to that point, I could not imagine doing otherwise. Certainly the crew of Andromeda, both then and now, surpassed the Drago-Kazov Pride in intelligence and survival ability a hundredfold, despite their small numbers -- with a few exceptions, whom we were still pursuing.  
  
I watched Dylan's profile, off and on. He seemed to have been chiseled out of gray rock these days, which was neither bad nor good; his toughness and endurance were becoming legendary. As long as he did not crumble into fragments afterward, I would try not to be overly concerned.  
  
Along with our family situations, which took priority with me somewhat over our mission whether I wished it or not, we were as a ship pursuing the rat-tail of the Kazov who had sided with the Magog during the Magog invasion. Charlemagne and Dylan and I had agreed that any Dragan or Kazov ship found that had taken part -- and Andromeda could identify them -- would be offered one chance at amnesty in return for retreating to the far edge of known space permanently. If they did not take up that offer, they became target practice.  
  
I did not need the practice. However, I appreciated the offer of amnesty, as it gave crews who may not have wanted to follow a particular captain on that side of that war a chance to mutiny and save their own lives, even if that meant exile. So far, three of the dozens of ships we had encountered in the past two months had accepted, had registered their crews' names with us to avoid further difficulties, and had departed to form new colonies along the Sontara Crest, a string of comfortable-looking M-class planets halfway into a system of stars in the opposite direction from where the Magog had originated.  
  
Exile could be survived. In a generation, if the New Commonwealth still existed, they could petition to join, if they played their cards right.  
  
But in the meantime, we were still pursuing the remaining Dragans to what Charlemagne said appeared to be their last true stronghold, Earth -- and I had no high hopes for our success, despite Dylan's determination to rid the cosmos of any remnant of sympathy for the Magog worldship.  
  
He had come a longer way in the past three years than in the previous three hundred.  
  


***

  
  
A minor distress call, on the way to Earth, from a Perseid-staffed freighter that needed some engine parts. Nothing enormous. It was routine for Harper to ferry himself over with spare parts to trade. He'd done it before, and always came out ahead.  
  
This time, when he came back, he was quiet, a little edgy. I put it down to having to deal with Perseids, who tend to conduct intellectual inquiry without regard for such things as food or rest, but as I watched him I knew it was more. He reported to Dylan, and then went to Workshop Seven to continue work on one of Ygraine's designs. As soon as possible, I went there to see how he was.  
  
He was leaning both elbows on a work table, staring at the pad with the plans as if it held the secrets of the universe. "Shut the door," he said, without looking at me.  
  
"Something is that bad."  
  
"Oh, yeah." Harper's face had stress marks carved into it that I had not seen since he and I were helpless among the Magog.  
  
"Were the Perseids unfriendly? We haven't upset them in any way I know of." I moved closer to him, concerned.  
  
"Nah, it wasn't that." His eyes met mine. "They were friendly. Really friendly. They wanted to know how I liked working on the Kodiak Pride ship."  
  
I let that sink in. "The Kodiak Pride ship. Not the New Commonwealth flagship Andromeda Ascendant."  
  
"Nope. The Nietzschian Pride ship Andromeda Ascendant."  
  
I leaned my hip against the work table and put an arm around his shoulders, and he leaned his head against me. "I wonder who's been telling tales about us."  
  
"That's not the whole problem, Tyr. Dylan overheard them say it at least once."  
  
"Oh, Hegel." If I regretted anything about my Nietzschian upbringing, it was the extreme lack of useful swear words. I compensated by muttering to myself in an obscure dialect of Surinali, which at least gave me an opportunity to vent.  
  
Harper nodded. "They're Perseids. Their damned planet was one of the first to sign with the Commonwealth. They should know better."  
  
"How did he take it?"  
  
"Stonefaced, same as usual. I think Beka was there to talk some sense into him; I overheard her making a wisecrack about the librarians never getting their research right. It might help."  
  
I mentally consigned the hapless freighter and its crew to the worst version of afterlife that I'd found in any culture. We did not need this, especially when we were headed for Earth to deal with more Nietschians.  
  
Yet when I returned to the bridge, Dylan seemed to be in a good enough mood that he was making jokes with Trance and Ygraine.  
  
Perhaps I was worrying too much.  
  


***

  
  
When the size of the crew more than doubled overnight, a few months ago, it took some adjustment for everyone to start to feel comfortable aboard the ship again. I suspect that nobody found the change easy.  
  
The Jaguar women who chose me, and the ones who decided to stay with Dylan rather than return to their pride, had to learn to live aboard a warship, not a pleasure craft. We had luxurious quarters, compared to those in many systems, but those quarters were three centuries old; as a modern crew we were, on the whole, personally less than wealthy. We paid for our supplies with trade and military services, and sometimes we had to make do with living less comfortably than we would have liked. Fortunately, when the Magog attacked the ship they had concentrated on the main halls and decks; this had preserved a great deal of the ship's living quarters untouched. Thus, we had a variety of options to offer for family living, once that had become the order of the day.  
  
Let me state categorically that I believe we did the right thing, the only wise thing, in marrying and bringing those of our wives with us who wished to come. This was the only way to begin to recreate Kodiak Pride, or shape it into a force that would be able to influence the future. I had come to care about Boudicca, Ygraine and Morgan as much as I cared about Harper; their acceptance of him eased my concerns for his safety aboard a ship suddenly full of people whose experience of unenhanced humans was not entirely polite. Had I been the one to choose, rather than be chosen, I would have chosen Boudicca above all others as first wife; I would have chosen her sisters as well, without a second thought. I would never regret -- could never regret -- the place they had found in my life, or the children they had borne, the new children of Kodiak Pride.  
  
But I was unused to sharing space with anyone for long.  
  
It had been difficult at times to become accustomed to sharing a bed with Harper, to losing the privacy of my own cabin for thinking and research. I had been on my own for more than twenty years since I'd been thrust into adulthood with the death of my family. It had been years since I'd shared a bed with anyone for more than a night or two. As I thought about it one day, while making my rounds through the halls to check for places where overly stressed metal might require replacement or repair, I realized that I had not shared a bed in that way since I was a child within my family, when I would huddle in with one or the other of my brothers on cold nights. During my time as a courtier slave on Kotyra, I had spent much time in other people's beds, but had never been asked to stay, and my own small bed was cold to me.  
  
Now, when I was within my family, I slept with up to three women and as many children as were available. This was the way we stayed close; sleep for us did not automatically mean mating but physical togetherness, and I made sure to take time with each woman apart from the others whenever she asked me. When I was not within my Kodiak family, but back within my own quarters, Harper often came with me, and we slept, or mated, or talked as we had in the past. That, at least, had not changed for us, and I was grateful.  
  
Those of us who had lived aboard the ship for more than a year, spread thinly through several miles of corridors and rooms, had to get used to hearing the sounds of other people where we least expected them. Because I had habitually wandered the ship's corridors at all hours from the time I first arrived, I may have been the first to learn of Beka's relationship with young Paris Ramses, conducted discreetly in unused crew quarters on deck 50.  
  
I found Harper's hideout, the nest he had made for himself and expanded so that it would accommodate bed guests, when I heard Ygraine there with him late one night after I had just left Boudicca sleeping, infant Seamus at her side. Ygraine's laughter made me smile.  
  
Ygraine had not had an easy transition to living aboard Andromeda. She became pregnant after coming here, but there were problem with her new pregnancy that nobody could have foreseen. She had agreed at the time that the child would not have survived; we had mourned briefly together, but afterward her sadness would not lift and she did not ask for me as often as her sisters did. Moreover, when she took care of little Seamus or Anastasia, Morgan's daughter, it was easy to see how much she missed her own. And she had been working with Harper on designing a new exohull for the Kali Ma, his small sloop, on new clothing designs and on creating a proper learning environment for the children.  
  
Harper said, one night late as we lay together in my quarters, "You know, Ygraine's not doing well."  
  
"I know." It hurt me that I could not give her what she wanted. After much research, Anjali and Trance had determined that, because of a minor genetic fluctuation that no one could have predicted, Ygraine and I were genetically incompatible; without a great deal of genetic manipulation no child of hers and mine would live. Both Anjali and Karla, who had been the Jaguar xenobiologist, vowed to find a way to make it possible, but for now I only knew I could not give her what she needed.  
  
Harper rolled to put his head on my shoulder and his hand over my heart. "She asked me if I would ..."  
  
"Do it."  
  
"Are you sure?"  
  
"Do what she asks. Please." I kissed him, letting my emotions flow into touch and taste. "If she is happy, everyone will benefit."  
  
"I'm sorry. Not trying to step into your shoes or anything."  
  
I shook back my hair and felt my upper back muscles relax. "It is her choice to make. I have no right to object. And why would I? She merely seconds the choice I made long before."  
  
He smiled then. "When you put it that way, what can I say?"  
  
"Nothing. When did she ask for you?"  
  
"Today."  
  
"Then what are you doing here with me?" I sat up quickly and pushed him away. "Go. Be with her."  
  
"Hey!" Harper rolled out of bed onto the floor. "Don't damage the merchandise. I'm going, I'm going. Sheesh, try to do the right thing and you get pushed around." But his eyes were happy, and he leaned back close to kiss me before he left.  
  
I lay back, relieved, and took a brief nap before going back to the family quarters, where I rolled into bed between two warm and sleepy women, one sleeping infant and one child that seemed inclined to explore the bed and everything in it rather than sleep. Since I was mostly awake, I let young Seamus crawl all over me and sent the best of wishes toward the one for whom he was named, my shieldbrother.  
  


***

  
  
Dylan, too, seemed to be feeling the pinch of space. He was not only being asked to accustom himself to a normal family life with his wives, but he had one child to care for and three more wives who wanted very much to have their own children. It seemed that the women I had known as a young man, who had treasured their independence and taken lovers at will for many years before deciding to choose a husband, had vanished from the current generation; these women all wanted their children as soon as possible, and were emphatic in their desire to act upon their need.  
  
One night I saw Dylan making the rounds of the lower decks, looking bedraggled; since he was heading, unconsciously, toward the area where Beka and Paris often played and mated, I suggested that he might enjoy a game of go back in my own quarters or his; he chose mine. We played for hours, and he said nothing extraordinary until the end, when he rose from his chair, stretched, and asked, "Did you ever notice that sometimes, when you finally get what you want, there's almost too much of it?"  
  
I could not help smiling. "I do believe I've noticed that."  
  
"Good, good. Glad it's not just me." He covered a yawn. "Trust me, it's not the company."  
  
"Who was it tonight? Olivia?" She had worn a particularly lean and hungry look when I saw her in the upper floor dining room, comparing texts for the history she was composing.  
  
"No, Anjali and Karla. They tag-teamed me."  
  
"You survived."  
  
"I'm awake. They fell asleep. I must have done something right."  
  
"I have no doubt of it."  
  
"And who was chasing you, if I may ask?"  
  
"Boudicca. She does not want young Seamus to be an only child. I think there's little chance of it, myself, but she seemed to feel some concern. And then, of course, Morgan had her own ideas."  
  
"Good thing Nerissa was willing to babysit."  
  
"I suppose. Having a child about is not that great a deterrent."  
  
"Really?" Dylan's jaw dropped. "You're kidding, aren't you?"  
  
I raised an eyebrow. "They fall asleep easily. Adults bore them. And then one can do whatever one wishes." He still looked skeptical. "When they're older, of course they watch. How else are they to learn anything?"  
  
"How, indeed," Dylan murmured faintly.  
  
"By then, it's to be hoped they've learned enough manners not to offer suggestions."  
  
"You're telling me you did?"  
  
"My older brother, Govannon. His timing was unwise." I could still hear Govannon's outrage at being summarily upended and spanked bare for interrupting our father, then being dropped back unceremoniously into the pile of children in the other large bed. Barbarossa had been a stickler about interruptions, but fair. "But he didn't mind the next day when he had something to contribute to the discussion in school."  
  
"Nietzschian children learn sexual behavior and techniques in school." His tone was patently unbelieving.  
  
"In Kodiak Pride, they did, in the Sylphidium. I believe most other prides had something similar." I shrugged. "Don't worry, you need not be concerned about teaching at that level for a few years yet."  
  
"For which I'm grateful, believe me." He passed a hand through his hair. "We ... did it much differently when I was younger."  
  
I nodded. Undoubtedly each species or people has its own method of acquainting the young with the joys and responsibilities of adulthood. Perhaps, if we rediscover Tarn Vedra, we can learn something from the planet where Dylan was a child.  
  


***

  
  
A few days later, I needed only to see Ygraine's happy face and watch her almost dance across the room to know that Harper had succeeded where I had failed. She came to me in the galley, where I was stirring a pot of soup, and twined her arms around me. "Good news," she whispered in my ear.  
  
"Are you pleased?" I asked, only to be certain.  
  
"Yes. Can you leave that for a while?"  
  
From the look in her eye I knew it would be several hours before I would return; I asked the ship to take care of the remainder of the recipe and went back to family quarters, which at that time of day were empty. Now she could be fearless, rather than frightened, for she knew she would have a child, and we could celebrate that without doubt or concern.  
  


***

  
  
I cornered Harper in the workshop where he was adjusting Ygraine's design for the Kali Ma's new hull. "I understand I owe you thanks," I said, without ceremony.  
  
"Oh? Oh! Really? Oh, that's great." He set aside the tools he was using and stood to stretch. "I haven't seen her in a day or so, but I've been in here for most of that. Dylan wants me to give the new hull a trial run in a week; if it works as well as Ygraine and Rommie say it will, Beka might let me make some adjustments to the Maru as well."  
  
"Then permit me to thank you before you become overly involved in your work." At first, when I put my arms around him, he kissed me and teased me with the tip of his tongue, but he issued a surprised yelp when I picked him up and set him on the work table itself, sitting with his legs over the edge. I proceeded to kiss him back, and work my way down his neck with lips and tongue and the careful roughness of my beard. When he lay back across the plans (pulling them aside as much as possible to avoid creases or other damage), I opened his clothing, wrapped my fist around his cock and stroked him twice before extending my kisses there as well.  
  
I had to hold him down to keep him from arching his back, from coming too quickly, but as soon as his hands were in my hair we moved in the same rhythm, and I took my time and enjoyed the taste of him and the texture of him and the sounds he made under my hands.  
  
Afterward, he breathed, "I should make you this happy more often."  
  
I snorted. "It's Morgan's turn next. Trust me, she'll wear you out."  
  
"But I thought you and she --"  
  
"We did. She is. But one does not argue with a Nietzschian woman, particularly when she wishes to be instructive."  
  
His head came up. "She wants to teach me something? Hey, I'll learn anything she wants."  
  
"I'm sure she'll be pleased when you tell her that."  
  
"And you'll be pleased when I make her happy, and then you'll come and please me." He smiled broadly at the ceiling. "Aren't feedback circuits marvelous?"  
  
"We can certainly continue this discussion in my quarters later on, if you're not otherwise occupied." I could not help smiling at the thought, both of our play later and of his probable "occupation." Morgan had had a late growth spurt after Anastasia's birth; she was taller than Boudicca now, nearly as tall as Dylan. She probably outweighed Harper by ten kilos, all of it muscle.  
  
"Hey, I'm looking forward to it, all of it. One of the things I like about you and your family, Tyr, is that they're never boring."  
  
"That, they are not." I straightened my clothes. "Tsk. Look at the disarray in here. What would Dylan say if he saw it?"  
  
"Probably the wrong thing." He linked his fingers through the strap of my mail shirt. "If you're not out of this and the rest of your clothing within two minutes after I arrive tonight, we're going to have words."  
  
"Oh, I'll definitely take that under advisement."  
  


***

  
  
The Nietzschian philosophy of sexuality, at least within Kodiak Pride when I was a child, was far less restrictive than what I later found among many of the other prides and sub-prides.  
  
Of course mating was meant to result in procreation. One must preserve the pride's genetic inheritance, and pass it on through time. One must do all in one's power to enhance one's abilities, and pass those abilities on to one's offspring, so that over time the pride's ability to survive adversity would improve. On average, a Nietzschian woman who is capable of bearing a child and is not already pregnant will become pregnant 95% of the time after mating, and she will know whether she has caught within two days or less.  
  
That does not mean that a Nietzschian woman who is with child will thereafter be uninterested in mating again for nine or ten months, or that she will not enjoy an enthusiastic relationship with whomever she chooses. Within a traditional family in any other pride, her choices might be limited to her husband; here, with the tiny selection of genetic variability available to us, I was willing to overlook much in order to broaden our genetic capabilities. Before it was destroyed, Kodiak Pride had had more than twenty separate lineages, and a nubile woman would have had a choice of anywhere from a dozen to a hundred men, depending upon her taste and desires. Now, with only myself as the source of Kodiak genetic material, I found myself unwilling to ask my wives to limit themselves lest we run into more genetic difficulties. It was not up to me to take more wives; it was up to the women to choose whom they would. I knew I would have children enough, over time; but Kodiak needed more than my bloodline to survive. I could afford to be generous; it was in my best interest and that of my family.  
  
And I knew that, regardless of the actual father of a Kodiak child, Anjali would make sure it bore the genetic markers that had come to me through Barbarossa and to him from his father, so that there would never be any question that the children of my house were of Kodiak Pride.  
  
All of this meant that, at some point, every male aboard the ship that exhibited alpha tendencies - - and we appeared to have no lack of them -- might well be chosen by one or another of my wives.  
  
It was an excellent thing that we all got along so well. I needed to make sure that would continue.  
  
And, for the same reasons, it was also possible that at some point one of Dylan's Nietzschian wives might wish to choose me to sire one of her children.  
  
Perhaps it was time for me to have a talk with the captain.  
  


***

  
  
Anyone who has seen me in battle will tell you I am fearless, within reason for the sake of self preservation; I will not charge a greater force unless I know I will win.  
  
I have been known to be somewhat less fearless where Dylan Hunt is concerned. The man possesses the ability to make me certain of his insanity, and then to get me to agree with it whether I wish to or not. This ability tends to engender within me a larger measure of caution than I might otherwise employ.  
  
Scouting out the territory before commencing action is generally the path of wisdom. I went to see Trance first.  
  
I found her, as usual, in the hydroponics garden, tending plants and watching Dylan's son David, who was napping in a warm soft place under a tree, carefully situated so that he would not injure himself if he should move. Trance was pruning the grapevine nearby, and setting the trimmed shoots aside to plant elsewhere.  
  
"We should have wonderful grapes this year," she told me. "I bet you can think of a lot of tasty things to do with them."  
  
"I'm sure I'll come up with something." I sat down near her and offered her a pastry I'd brought from the galley.  
  
"Thank you, that was sweet of you, but I'm not really hungry right now and the baby can't have it yet so why don't you eat it?" She observed me shrewdly. "You didn't come here just to check the plants, did you? What's on your mind?"  
  
"It's not philosophy this time, or not the same kind." The pastry did taste good, if slightly dry.  
  
"You mean you're not still in pursuit of happiness?" she teased.  
  
"Minx," I said. "Let's just say that I'm concerned with a wider view of happiness aboard ship than in the past."  
  
"I can see why." Her eyebrows rose. "Whose happiness, in particular, are you concerned with? Let me guess. You're fine. Harper's doing great. Your wives are happy. Beka and Paris seem to be happy."  
  
"You see the question."  
  
"Yes, but I'm not sure I have an answer for you. If you ask me whether Dylan's wives are happy, I'd have to say you should ask them."  
  
"I can't ask them." I winced at the thought of questioning Nerissa or Karla about their husband's skills. "It's a matter of protocol and custom; they may raise the subject, but I cannot."  
  
"Then ..."  
  
"I'm not certain that Dylan has acquired an adequate understanding of the --" I broke off, and decided to try again. "He never attended the Sylphidium. He has certainly had relationships of a sort with my people's women in the past ..."  
  
"But not long term, and not this kind, am I right?"  
  
"I believe marriage, among us, is not the same as it is among his people."  
  
"I believe you're right," Dylan said from behind me.  
  
I jumped. Trance busied herself with taking the rest of the shoots to another growing area, leaving me to sit next to the baby. And there was Dylan, walking around the corner of the low work table at the side to pick up little David and hold him as he slept. He sat down and leaned back against the tree, sighing.  
  
"Ah, warmth. This feels so good, Trance. I think we need more of this kind of light throughout the ship." He shifted the baby from one arm to another as David roused slightly then settled back down, thumb in mouth.  
  
"I can talk to Harper if you want," Trance offered. She moved on to a further area of the garden, toward the far door.  
  
I let the silence build for a while, totally at a loss for words. When I glanced aside at him, he didn't look upset or annoyed, which was promising. "Dylan --"  
  
"You're right, Tyr. You're absolutely correct. I haven't been married before. My relationships with women have been temporary, though not because I wanted it that way, and I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing most of the time now." He paused. "And I'm concerned that I'm going to make the wrong kind of mistake and not even know it."  
  
"You're not used to having women call the shots, are you?"  
  
"When they're admirals, yes. Otherwise, no. And it's complicated. I stop being captain when I walk into family quarters; I expected that. But ..."  
  
"It's a lot to have happen at once. In the last year, you've had to learn immediately what took me sixteen years," I said lightly. "Do you let them teach you?"  
  
"Yes. But I wish ..."  
  
I watched the leaves on the tip of the highest branch in the garden move softly in the recirculating air. "Have you read Enkidu's treatise, 'The Garden of Spices,' or Shakakhan's 'History of Nietzschian Sexuality'?"  
  
"No." He turned a frank gaze toward me. "Would they help?"  
  
"They might. I might be able to find a few more things in the All Systems University Library that I read in the Sylphidium, but most of the lessons there were taught in a more, shall we say, hands-on fashion."  
  
He nodded. "I'd appreciate that. It's hard, feeling so ... I'm not used to it, especially ..."  
  
"Our women tend to be both educated and enthusiastic. And they do value you for yourself, Dylan, or they would never have chosen you."  
  
"Some did." A flash of old pain crossed his face.  
  
"Those who left are still your wives, but they are Jaguar women too; Jaguar Pride has lost so many people that it's not surprising they wanted to bring the children up there. But they are still your children, when you visit, and your wives."  
  
"That's a comfort," he said, with an attempt at lightness that didn't quite work. He rolled his shoulders a little, getting into a more comfortable position. "There was one reference I ran across in a novel by Shonagan Wellington, to tadrony-something..."  
  
"Tadronnisich." I knew that word very well. "The art of causing orgasm by kissing alone."  
  
"Really? And no touching elsewhere? You're not talking about --" He made a completely recognizable gesture with his free hand, and I shook my head.  
  
"No, just kissing. Lips, tongue." I paused, knowing I was edging toward something Dylan might be uncomfortable with. "It can be done, but it is never described in the books in quite the right way."  
  
"Why is that? To preserve the innocence of the reader?"  
  
I let loose a chuckle. "Nobody who reads Shonagan Wellington has a great deal of innocence left, I would think. No, if it were described too accurately they would be required to sell books that could be much more easily cleaned."  
  
"Ah." The baby was still sleeping in his arms. "When will his arm spikes start to show?"  
  
"Probably about the time he finishes teething, or so it was with my sisters' children."  
  
"You had a large family, didn't you?"  
  
"It was of average size for the time. Barbarossa was chosen by three women, and I was the youngest son of the second one who chose him. I had brothers, sisters, kinsmen."  
  
"And that's who you learned these things from." Dylan shook his head slowly. "Your world was so much different than mine."  
  
"Of course. And things are different now. We cannot simply maintain the older ways without adapting to the circumstances in which we live."  
  
"I know." Dylan seemed to come to a decision; he kissed David's forehead and laid him back down in his nest on the ground, then turned to me. "Privacy, Rommie."  
  
"Acknowledged."  
  
"Tyr, will you show me this?"  
  
"You're asking me to teach you tadronnisich?" I wanted to be very certain I knew what he was asking, and that he knew.  
  
"Yes." He hesitated, as if seeking words. "If I had married a woman from Coryan, and she was homesick for the food of her planet, I'd learn to cook Coryan food. But I've married women who value sexual expression above all else, and I never thought I'd say this, but I really need to learn more. This isn't a proposition, or anything else; you're not my type. I just need to know."  
  
"I understand." And I did. Dylan had a kind heart and a steady one; where his regard was given, it remained, and he had fallen in love with his wives. This was as it should be; the pity was that he had come to marriage so uneducated.  
  
"Well?"  
  
"Of course. I think the ground is a little softer over here; you might want to move closer."  
  
He checked the baby's position once more -- he had not yet learned that Nietzschian children can and will sleep through anything except their own physical distress -- and moved over next to me.  
  
"Part of it is the position of your head, and part is the position of your lips and the way the tongue strokes, and where." I put an arm around his shoulders to make sure he would be stabilized and comfortable. "Let me do the work this time, and then you can try it on me."  
  
"All right," he said, with a nervous half-laugh, but he calmed when I put my fingers on his jaw to move it into place.  
  
"Relax. Close your eyes." I leaned in slowly, and brushed my lips across his twice, until I felt his lips opening under mine, and then slid my tongue between them slowly, tasting him, letting him taste me, giving him time to relax into the kiss. There was a spot, under the tongue, oh, yes, right there, and I touched it hesitantly and felt him stiffen. I continued; he arched toward me, so I deepened the kiss and when I felt him respond I took him all the way along, holding him until he was a limp weight on my arm.  
  
His eyelids fluttered. "I'm dizzy. That was ... amazing." His mouth twisted. "It's a good thing there's a shower over there in the corner by the workroom."  
  
"Isn't it?" I knew he had not felt that before; I could tell. It was an amazing thing to have not only found any part of Dylan's experience still virgin but to have taken it sweetly and with his consent. I knew I would treasure this memory. "Would you care to return the favor?"  
  
"Here or elsewhere?" He glanced aside at the sleeping baby. "I know I'll want to shower and change, but I don't want to abandon him."  
  
"I'll ask Trance to come back."  
  
"She's still here?"  
  
"She's on the very far side with her back to us, in an area with no mirrors. Relax." I leaned back against the tree trunk. "You can try it on me, and then if you have any more questions we can deal with them in the shower -- and no more demos unless you request them. Fair enough?"  
  
"Fair enough. I think some of the surprise is that I'm not used to kissing anyone who's larger than I am, or stronger."  
  
I thought of the energy with which Boudicca pursued me when she wished, or the power in Morgan's arms. "With our women, size is not necessarily an indicator of strength."  
  
"You know, I'd noticed that." He chuckled and leaned toward me, a little more comfortably than before. "You ready?"  
  
"Certainly."  
  
His first effort at tadronnisich, while not perfect, was praiseworthy. In my people, the gland under the tongue that triggers orgasm is slightly larger than in other humans; he found it easily, but took his time at bringing me off, as if to show that he was not entirely without experience. He kissed well; I relaxed and concentrated on showing him a good time, and in giving him nonverbal indicators of my pleasure. By the time he finished we both needed the shower.  
  
Dylan leaned back, his face alight. I had a sudden vision of what he must have been as a young High Guard officer, so many years before, and thought that if we could have met, at that age, we might have had some interesting encounters. As it was, we had proceeded along different paths to get to this place, and those paths had undoubtedly worked their changes on each of us.  
  
He picked up his son as we headed toward the showers, and put the child down, thumb still firmly in his mouth, next to Trance, who glanced up at him with a sly grin. He flicked a look at me and we both leaned down to kiss her on opposite cheeks before heading toward the shower room.  
  
"Oh, what a friendly ship!" she said, giggling.  
  
"Don't get any ideas," Dylan cautioned, with a grin.  
  
"Ideas about what? Everything's hypothetical in philosophy, isn't it, Tyr?"  
  
"That's one hypothesis," I said.  
  
"Dylan, do you think I don't know education when I see it?" Trance shrugged her shoulders. "Or that I don't know what it looks like when one friend is doing a favor for another?" Her smile took the sting from her words. "Nobody will be using that shower for a while; usually I'm the only one who does. Have fun, or ... whatever." She picked up the baby in one arm and the basket of cuttings in the other and went back to work.  
  
Dylan watched them go. "Will they hurt him?"  
  
"What?" This time I had no idea what he was talking about. "Who?"  
  
"David. The spikes, when they grow in. Will they hurt?"  
  
I held the shower room door for him. "It's like teething. It will hurt some, but not the same way. He was born with a good start on them already; they won't have to break the skin, just grow. That's much easier."  
  
Dylan shuddered. "It's still hard to imagine."  
  
I hastened to reassure him. "It's not that bad. We have medicated lotions that ease the discomfort, and he will receive his first gauntlets then; those will help a lot."  
  
"That's why you wear them."  
  
"You thought they were only a fashion statement?" I unfastened one of my gauntlets and removed it carefully, so he could see how the arm spurs grew through the flesh of the muscle, and notice the tender skin at the base. "Without protection they can become intensely painful."  
  
"May I?" He reached out hesitantly at my nod and brushed his fingertips across the soft skin; I drew a deep, sharp breath. "What, did I hurt you?"  
  
"Quite the -- opposite." As his eyes widened I realized the truth. "You didn't know they were an erogenous zone for us?"  
  
"No, I didn't." His eyes widened, as if only now had he understood some things about his wives that had been a mystery to him. "Are there any more that I should know about?"  
  
"You know you could ask them that."  
  
"Oh, come on, Tyr." Dylan at his most playful could be all charm. "If you show me, I'll know so much more quickly, and they might be inclined to think I'm not so bad after all." He let a fingertip glide lightly on the skin between the spines; I felt myself begin to rise and harden again, almost instantly, something he would be unable to avoid noticing now that we were both naked. "You weren't kidding."  
  
"You know I never 'kid', Dylan." I let the growl in my voice be heard. "Unless you desire much more of a learning session than you might want, you should stop while you're ahead."  
  
"Or?" His finger had stopped, but had not left my arm. The spot he touched burned and glowed.  
  
"Or you might receive a first-hand dose of my anti-Magog serum." He was making me too hot for caution. I was large enough that I could have my way with him, should I choose it, though I knew in my bones that it would be so unwise I might as well drop myself out an airlock now and be done with it.  
  
He withdrew his hand. "I've been with men before, Tyr. You wouldn't be the first." I raised an eyebrow, but he slid two chiseled fingertips through between the spines on each arm at once, and I nearly spent myself on the spot.  
  
I stepped forward, backing him into the wall. "If this is only a game to you, it ends now. If you want further education, you must take the responsibility for what you have started -- if you are an honorable man." I had never expected to use the civil tone, bordering on the formal, with anyone in such a circumstance, but it was not surprising that Dylan had provoked this reaction, as he often provoked the unexpected from me. I would never have anticipated this, however, except as a power play. "And if you're seeking to play in order to find out where my control buttons might be," I edged a thigh between his and leaned closer, so our bodies pressed together all the way up, "you will search forever without finding them."  
  
Dylan's expression shifted, as if his mind had just shuffled the cards into a different hand than he'd expected. "You're right. I'm sorry. I'll stop."  
  
"Do you still want an education from me?" I leaned one hand against the wall on either side of his head, arm spines flexed. Given the slightest incentive, I could have him up against that wall with myself buried in him to the root, and both of us knew it.  
  
"Only if it won't ... oh, hell, Tyr, I'm really out of line."  
  
"The question stands." I could feel my cock brushing against my belly, still hard, and his rising to meet it.  
  
His eyes met mine, and we both breathed with difficulty for a long moment.. "Show me the erogenous zones I should know," he said at last, "if you please."  
  
"Take note of where I touch you, then, and of my reactions. And this is your only free lesson, Dylan. Use it well."  
  
"I understand." He leaned forward and kissed me, not hard but steadily, a kiss that searched and offered rather than took.  
  
I was the one who took, this time, as well as gave. I put my hands on him in the places where one would touch a Nietzschian woman to bring her the greatest passion and joy, and I showed him how one would caress and whispered, in his ear, for what purpose each caress was meant. I noticed his own reactions, and memorized them, and used them again on him, pushing him ever so carefully toward the state of arousal wherein he would lose track of himself, of his own wants, and yield -- if he ever would.  
  
Of course I was testing him; everything is a test when one is Nietzschian. So we contested in the Sylphidium, when I was a child, to best one another by imposing pleasure upon one another, with the one who surrendered most to enjoyment the loser unless he could draw his partner/opponent along with him and consenting.  
  
And I found that he was not, entirely, ignorant of how one would be with one of our kind -- after the last few months of residence, one would not expect him to have been monastic or naive -- but that his understanding was simply several levels below where it should have been. He had bedded one Nietzschian woman that I knew of before his marriage -- Elssbett Mossadim, the former wife of the Jaguar Arch-Duke, Charlemagne Bolivar -- but he had not spent enough time with her to have learned the ways of turning her mastery back upon her, of overaweing her with his prowess, so that she who pursued would become she who was pursued and would consent to this. It was always a contest; so it had always been. With Elssbett, I suspected, he had spent most of his time merely staying alive, and since he was still alive he must have done an adequate job of it.  
  
I brought him along until he was aching, hard, panting, until he would not have known his name if he'd been asked, until he might have forgotten the uses of language entirely. The endlessly available warm water of Andromeda rained down upon us, and he turned his strength on me to pull me in, to put my hands where they had wanted to go from the start, teasing him, tormenting him gently until he turned and yielded, leaning forward against the wall, legs apart, panting as I slid warm hands up between his thighs, as I found my way into him, as I felt myself slide deeper, slicked by shower gel, until I was held in heat, tightness, the strain of muscles nearly as strong as my own. I reached around to stroke him, and he shuddered and exploded around me, but I held off, with all my control, until he had spent himself in long spurts -- and then started the slow grinding slide that cruised across his pleasure spot on every move. His knees nearly buckled with pleasure and he arched his back against me and reached back with one hand to stroke my side, my flank, my leg, whatever he could reach.  
  
I took him thoroughly, though more gently than I might have if he had been Nietzschian; he would not heal as quickly from any injuries, and I doubted he would have wished Trance to know the precise extent of his current educational activities. When I spent myself, within him, it was no longer a question of thought or desire, only need, the arrow seeking its target because it could no longer resist finding it. I leaned forward over his back, pulled him upward with one arm, and set my teeth carefully into the nape of his neck and along the near ridge of his shoulder. I slid my hands along his back, seeking out any more places I might have forgotten, and for a moment only reached around to hold him completely close, as I slid back out of him. When I loosened my arms, he turned within them, his legs buckling, and drew my head down for one last kiss.  
  
"Do you think you have learned enough," I breathed, when our lips separated from each other's.  
  
"I believe I will manage." His eyes opened, then narrowed; his gaze speculative. "How much of a favor do I owe you this time?"  
  
"Let's call it even," I suggested. "Of course, should you decide you wanted further tutorial ..."  
  
"I'll keep that in mind."  
  
I washed him, he washed me, we touched more and more casually as if our temporary intimacy was draining away with the shower. By the time we were done, we stood apart, and said little to one another -- but words were unnecessary. What he would make of this was out of my hands. I had tried to make sure his wives would be pleased with their choice, and to ensure that, should Boudicca look in his direction as I suspected she might, she would not be displeased with what she would find.  
  


***

  
  
One does not make comparisons in such a situation. One appreciates the immediate opportunity, and does not evaluate it as greater or lesser than any in the past. However, despite this caution that I continually reminded myself to observe, I realized that Dylan's strong, weathered body suited me so much better than Paris Ramses, his many-times-great-nephew, had ever done. The same genetic structure did not guarantee the same effect, though Paris had been a well-educated treasure the few times we had encountered one another; as Charlemagne's heir-designate, he had needed all the Magog-protection available, and I had been pleased to oblige.  
  
One does what one can to assure the success of an alliance when one's life depends upon it.  
  
One takes care of one's family; that is the duty of a man. One takes care of one's pride's welfare; that is the duty of a pride alpha. And one considers one's own self-interest in all these areas, and makes sure it is served as well. And, not necessarily last, one considers the wellbeing of the person with whom one takes pleasure, and makes sure all is done that would be desirable.  
  
For once in my life, I believed I had fulfilled all my goals simultaneously.  
  
Why, then, did I feel uncertain as I left the floor of hydroponics gardens?  
  
Perhaps it was the expression on Dylan's face as I let him go, that told me he had learned far more than he'd expected, and not what he had anticipated. He had allowed himself to surrender - - that had been the point, after all, to teach him how to please his wives in that way -- but the idea that he, himself, might be one who would surrender may not have been part of his knowledge before.  
  
I had taken him further than he wanted to go, and perhaps further than I should have gone, and he had realized too much by it.  
  
I did not want to face the outcome. I hoped it would not end in disaster.  
  


***

  
  
"Hey, Tyr. You want to see what I'm working on?" Harper called to me from his shop. "Neat little gizmo that's going to make your life so much easier."  
  
"Oh?" I had been heading for my quarters, for some time alone, perhaps for some rest uninterrupted by the thoughts arising in my mind, if that were possible. "What in the world could make my life easier?"  
  
"Uh-oh. You don't look good." Harper closed the door behind me and set privacy mode. "Should I ask?"  
  
"I think I might be in trouble." I sat on a low work table and rubbed my face with my hands.  
  
"What? How? Who?" His face cleared. "No, wait, the math's not that hard. It's got to be Dylan, isn't it?"  
  
I nodded. "He has been having ... problems. He does not understand our culture. His wives are unhappy."  
  
"So he asked you for help or info, and you gave it to him. So?"  
  
I chewed on my lower lip, caught myself doing it and stopped. "It is possible that I have shown him more than he needed to know."  
  
Harper frowned, confused. "Okay. It's none of my business, but what did he ask you to teach him?"  
  
"Tadronnisich." I ran my tongue over my lips; he knew the signal.  
  
"Oh boy. So. You and Dylan. Finally. And you're not happy about this? You didn't enjoy it?"  
  
"That wasn't the point." I leaned forward, trying to explain to him and to myself. "He asked me to show him more, and I made him consent before I would. By our customs, the consent is all, but he does not think according to our customs."  
  
"You 'made' him consent." Harper studied me, one foot tapping. "You seduced him."  
  
"In order to teach him, nothing more." I spread my hands wide, attempting to explain. "This is what we did in the Sylphidium, to learn to read others, to learn to give and receive pleasure in all ways."  
  
"But he learned too much." Harper paced back and forth, pausing as ideas struck him. "He learned that you're stronger, but he knew that already. He learned that you like sex with men, but he knew that already too, unless he thinks I'm a doily or something." He stopped. "He learned that being captain does not mean he's in charge -- and the last time he knew that, he went into a black hole for three hundred years."  
  
Harper was right. I had shown Dylan how much I knew of his own weaknesses and frailties. If he had been Nietzschian, and a brother, he might have thanked me for showing him where he needed more armor, but he was not. "This is much, much worse."  
  
"And he's taking it all the wrong way."  
  
"I could be overreacting," I said. "But he may not have connected what we did today with what I did with Charlemagne some time back and realized the legal and ethical issues involved."  
  
"Whoa. Stop right there. Legal. Ethical. What are you talking about?" Harper went to the side of the room, to the food dispenser that Trance had insisted be installed when he was ill. "Here. You need something to drink." He handed me a steaming mug of kaffe, which I accepted. "Now, tell me what you're talking about."  
  
The kaffe tasted strong; he must have altered the formula in the computer. "When Charlemagne came here, seeking the serum, he used the circumstances of my giving it to him as a method to bind us in shikastri. This is an oath of the body, a contract between leaders. It swore us to support one another beyond self-interest for a time. Do you understand?"  
  
"A contract between leaders." He put it together. "And Charlemagne came to you, not Dylan. Oh, boy. Let me see if I've got it straight. You had sex with Charlemagne -- "  
  
"As you knew, so that he could have a sample of my semen to test and compare to the serum Trance formulated from it, and be sure he was not given poison."  
  
"Right. Makes perfect sense, in a paranoid Nietzschian way. And I'm not saying that's bad. So, Charlemagne Bolivar and you had a bargain. Is it still on?"  
  
I shook my head. "The shikastri was separate from his alliance with Dylan against the Magog. Shikastri debt was half paid by his acquiescence to the women coming here, to the Jaguar presence here, and the rebuilding of Kodiak Pride. When he has found the planet for Kodiak to build on, he will have fulfilled it more than completely. And, on my side, I am bound to take care of any of his family who are in residence, in whatever way is possible."  
  
"And Dylan didn't know this."  
  
"Not ... explicitly." I shrugged. "If he has realized it, that's because of a stupid comment I made, that this lesson would be his only free one."  
  
"So now he thinks that you and Charlemagne may have some scheme to take over Andromeda, and he just might be suspicious of all the Jaguars aboard." Harper leaned a hip against the work table I sat on. "No shit. You're in trouble, all right."  
  
I paced, trying to think. "I could try to talk to him alone, perhaps in the observation deck, to explain. I could tell him formally that Charlemagne and I are no longer shikastrin, and that he himself is not bound by any shikastri toward me at all. As it is," I sipped the kaffe, which slid comfortingly down my throat, "that would probably be the worst thing to do."  
  
"I don't know." Harper considered. "Dylan's a pretty fair guy, but it looks to me as if you might have scared the sense right out of him. Better give him some room for a day or two."  
  
I raised my head. "You know he's not sane sometimes, don't you?"  
  
Harper nodded. "Oh, yeah. No doubt about it. But what's a little insanity between friends?" He sobered, and put his hand on my shoulder. "I know. When Dylan's scared and not completely sane, he's not the same guy at all. He's like one of you guys, but less predictable."  
  
"I'm not sure if I should thank you for that remark or not."  
  
"F'get it." He leaned against my shoulder casually. "It might not be that bad, you know. You might have misread him. He could have been thinking of something else."  
  
"I sincerely hope so." I set the empty mug down beside me. As I pulled him in for a kiss, I murmured, "Just as I hope you know how much you mean to me."  
  
"Same thing, right back at you." He ran his fingers through my hair, the way I loved. "Give him a little time and space. He'll come around. I mean, the guy asked you to teach him about sex, and you did. He can't say you lied to him."  
  
"True." He could not have expected to realize how helpless he could be against me, or how he would enjoy it.  
  
"You think I expected everything that happened with us? C'mon. He's got to take some responsibility for this. He could have said no," Harper reassured me.  
  
"Actually, at that point, he'd forgotten how language worked, I think."  
  
"Then you did a good job. Leave it at that. Don't go all broody on me; it makes your spikes stick out farther and they get caught in my clothes."  
  
"Oh, we can't have that." And I let myself relax in his arms and know the love of the one person I could always trust.  
  


***

  
  
But it bothered me.  
  
I sent Dylan by personal bot my own copies of Enkidu's "The Garden of Spices" and Shakakhan's "History", as well as the partial copy of Shonagon's "Song of the Eagle," which should help him. I thought of adding a note with them, but could not find words to say that would not make the situation worse, and so sent the books alone to his personal rooms, for he, too, had kept his private room separate from the family.  
  
And then I worked my shifts and went on with life. I slept with my wives, played with my children, and in my spare moments reread a novel written centuries ago by an Earth woman who had an uncanny appreciation for the modes of communication; her characters employed different rituals, certainly, but the modes were strikingly similar in the midst of her "truths universally acknowledged."  
  
A few days later, while I was in the galley before a shift, cooking a pot of what Harper insisted on naming 'chilly' though I knew it as a spicy vegetable-bean stew, Beka breezed in, followed by Karla, after sparring in the exercise room. Both of them headed immediately for the cold drinks, and when they had mopped off their foreheads and gulped half a bottle of cold tea each, they perched on the stools on the other side of the counter and watched me slice Gallifrean click melons for the stew. These need to be soaked in salted water for an hour after slicing, to remove bitterness, but their protein content was comparable to good beef or lizard, and I knew the flavor would mesh well with the spiciness of the dish.  
  
"All right. I'm going to ask you, Tyr, since you're available." Beka tucked a wisp of hair behind her ear and glanced at Karla, who nodded. I had not realized until then how much alike the two of them looked; were it not for the arm spikes and Karla's platinum-on-peach coloring as opposed to Beka's reddish-blond-on-tan, they could have been sisters.  
  
I glanced at her to acknowledge that I'd listen, as I carefully pared the bitter outer skin away from the tender cerise inner melon. It would cook to a deep meat-red, I knew.  
  
"What put a force lance up Dylan's ass?" Beka asked. I choked slightly, but she continued without noticing. "He's impossible."  
  
"He's always impossible," Karla reminded her, "in one way or another."  
  
"True, but he's usually easier to work with."  
  
"What did he do this time?" I set the trimmed melon pieces into a dish of salted water, covered it and put it aside.  
  
"Well, for one thing, he bit off Paris's head when Paris suggested a change to the repair and renovation schedule." Beka was counting on her fingers, a bad sign. "Then, when Harper tried to tell him that it was his own idea, not something Paris came up with, and that Rommie had already agreed, he told Harper to get off the bridge."  
  
"He what?"  
  
"Harper went, of course. So did Paris. So did Ygraine and Boudicca."  
  
"And so did we," Karla added. She stared at the embroidery on her gauntlets, a delicate design that I thought particularly suited to her personality. "Does he do this often? He's acting like Aillil, the Matriarch's third husband." A shrug. "Perhaps he thinks he needs to become more forceful in order to be attractive to us?"  
  
"I doubt it," Beka told her. "He's acting like he's under a lot of stress."  
  
"Well, he is. We all have been," I said. "Look at all that has happened in the last year."  
  
"He never relaxes," Karla said. "Never." Her eyes met mine. "This is not what I expected."  
  
I sent her a silent message, hoping she would read it in my eyes: do not choose me now. Please.  
  
"It's not that I want another man," she continued, with a small nod to me, "but I have so little experience of non-Nietzschian men that I'm uncertain how to proceed with him."  
  
"Has he been playing basketball at all lately?" Beka wondered. "He used to do that all the time. He said it relaxed him."  
  
"Not that I know of." Karla glanced at me and I shrugged agreement. "Is it difficult?"  
  
"Not for any of us, I'd think," I said. "Beka, do you think we should --"  
  
"Organize a ship-wide basketball tournament or something?" She considered. "That might work. God knows, something has to."  
  
"Dylan likes to be in control," I said slowly. "He's not used to a life in which he has no say in what happens to him and to the ship. I think it bothers him." I did not say it frightened him. Beka knew it without that word.  
  
"Yeah, he's Mr. Control, even more than you, Tyr. Hell, compared to what he's like right now you're Mr. Laid-Back Horizontal." Beka slammed the rest of the cold tea down the back of her throat as if it had been hard liquor.  
  
"How did Harper take it?" I asked.  
  
"Really well. He stood up to Dylan, he made his point, he didn't get mad. He collected Paris on the way out and the two of them went down to one of the workshops to do something else." Beka frowned. "You know, this is one of those times when I really miss Rev Bem; he was such a stabilizing influence on Dylan when he got crazy. On all of us, actually."  
  
"That was the Magog crew member?" Karla attempted to suppress a shudder. "I can't imagine a stabilizing or helpful Magog."  
  
"He was one of a kind," I agreed. "What about Rommie? She can usually talk sense into him."  
  
"Now, that's a good question."  
  
I kept my counsel. It was an open secret among the Maru's crew that android Rommie would have shared Dylan's bed if he had only glanced her way in request. She appeared to hold no anger about Dylan's marriage and had befriended his wives as much as they would allow; her presence during the birth of our children, his and mine, certainly helped with this. However, she was still dedicated first to Dylan and to the New Commonwealth, before anything else. Perhaps her personal wish that he be happy would assist us.  
  
"Beka," Karla began. She glanced at me and away, and I knew enough to clear my equipment and take it to be washed, thereby removing myself from immediate view but remaining within earshot. "When you were with Dylan, was he like this?"  
  
Beka bit her lower lip. "Not exactly," she said finally, "but I had no expectations of him. It wasn't the same thing. We blew off steam together, that's all. I didn't want anything more."  
  
"I can understand that, and I can't." Karla mused. "I am still learning about different species and cultures."  
  
"Are you sure you're not an anthropologist, rather than a xenobiologist?"  
  
"It comes to the same thing, sometimes," she admitted. "Cousin, do you have anything to add?"  
  
I turned, surprised. This was the first time any of Dylan's wives had honored me with that title. Of course, they were Charlemagne's cousins, and he was my brother-by-marriage, but I was touched, all the same. "I would not want to speak out of turn," I said finally, "but you do know that Dylan never attended anything similar to the Sylphidium, don't you?"  
  
"Really?" Karla was astonished. "Are you sure?"  
  
"What's that?" Beka asked. "A finishing school for sylphs, whatever they are?"  
  
"A school of the sensual arts." Karla raised an eyebrow toward me, as Beka looked dubious, and I nodded. "I don't believe all prides have them, any more, but we did, and apparently Kodiak did as well."  
  
"Did Tarn Vedra? Do we even have records of the educational system there, outside the High Guard Academies?" Beka turned to me.  
  
"I don't know," I said slowly. "It's not something I'd thought about much."  
  
"I think we should find out, if for no other reason than educating the children, eventually." Karla nodded decisively.  
  
"Of course," I said. "Education is crucial, don't you agree?"  
  
"Yes, I do," she replied, her eyes narrowed, reading me. After a moment she gave me a small nod; apparently I had passed her test, whatever it was.  
  


***

  
  
"I'm not blind," the ship's AI presence informed me in my cabin, after a long and tiresome work shift. I had spent ten hours with Harper to recalibrate the majority of the weaponry, since Morgan's time-function alterations had made it impossible to fire accurately while in hyperslip. During that time we had heard from Dylan exactly twice, and on neither of those instances had he acknowledged my existence.  
  
"I never said you were."  
  
"You act that way." The shimmering figure crossed her arms. "You owe Dylan an apology."  
  
"I don't think so."  
  
She tapped her foot. "Tyr, I could care less what part of whose body lines up with someone else. It really doesn't matter to me. What matters is the wellbeing of this battleship, and its captain, and right now the captain is not in good shape."  
  
I sighed. "Maybe I should talk with Rommie."  
  
"You probably should. However, I doubt she'll be any less over-emotional than the rest of you." The shimmer vanished as I heard Rommie's hard knock on the door.  
  
Rommie came in swiftly, closing the door behind herself. "We need to talk, Tyr."  
  
"Are you equipped to be a ship's counselor?"  
  
"What?" The question seemed to shake her. "Not exactly. I mean, I have the data available, but I'm not that familiar with exactly what it means in practice. Why?"  
  
"I was hoping you could do better than I did, with Dylan."  
  
Rommie stared at me. "Is that what was happening? Dylan came to you for help."  
  
"And I gave it to him." I stared at the book in my hands. "Obviously, it was not a type of help he was prepared to accept."  
  
"What made you think he would?"  
  
"He said it was not his first time." I looked across at her. "I don't want to think what would happen to the treaty if the rest of his wives were to leave him."  
  
"That's silly. Why would they want to leave?" she scoffed. My gaze on her remained steady, and her mouth dropped open. "You're kidding me."  
  
"Our ways are ... different."  
  
"Oh, come on. You're all homo sapiens. How different can it be?" She frowned. "I think you're over-reacting."  
  
"Am I?"  
  
"Dylan is not coming undone. He's just under stress. He'll be fine."  
  
"How long has he been under stress? Since we first found the Magog worldship? Since he lost his Sarah? Since he arrived in this time?"  
  
Rommie nodded slowly. "All of the above."  
  
"You're the only one who knew him from before."  
  
"He's ... certainly harder on himself than he was. I don't know if that's good or not." She frowned at me suddenly. "When you and Dylan and Rev and Beka were away, getting supplies, back then, and Harper was here," she moved a hand in front of her abdomen, as if to indicate Harper's then-infested condition, "he was in pretty bad shape, emotionally, and I didn't realize it. His brain waves had different patterns than before."  
  
"How are Dylan's brain waves?"  
  
She considered, her eyes sliding to the side. "Not usual. I can see if he wants to talk to me, but I don't want to push him. And I can't guarantee that anything I say will help. I can't joke around with him quite the way Beka does; she treats him as an equal."  
  
"Perhaps that's something you'll have to get past."  
  
"I'm not sure if I can."  
  
"Try."  
  
She drew a breath -- why did androids do that, to make humans feel more comfortable? "You're different, too, you know. You've changed quite a bit."  
  
"Much has happened. My responsibilities are different now."  
  
"And one of them is Dylan, instead of the other way around."  
  
This time I nodded. "We are all adapting."  
  
She bowed slightly and left.  
  


***

  
  
Regardless of any other obligations, Kodiak Pride ate the evening meal together whenever it was possible. This gave me the time to get to know my children, and my wives, and relax among my own people.  
  
I had not expected two of Dylan's wives to dine with us, but Olivia had spent the day with Boudicca on research, and Nerissa had brought baby David to play with our children, and I was glad to see them. Boudicca and Morgan kissed me as I came in, and Ygraine followed them, large with child and healthy.  
  
"We are celebrating," Morgan informed me softly. "I've ordered the 'bots to bring us a feastday dinner." I must have looked surprised, for she and Boudicca smiled at one another across me and then smiled back at me as if I should have known what was being celebrated.  
  
Of course I should have known that it wouldn't be some obscure Jaguar Pride holiday. "You're -- both of you?"  
  
"Yes," Boudicca said. "Anjali verified it, and we're fine."  
  
This was the best news I'd had in days. I lifted both of them off the floor and whirled them, one on each arm, in a joyous hug. "If we were not entertaining, I'd show you just how pleased I am," I murmured to them.  
  
"Later." Boudicca's reply both reminded me of our guests and of my current situation outside family quarters, and I put them down carefully and went to greet Olivia, Nerissa and the children.  
  
Already, young Seamus was beginning to walk. He toddled over to me and started to climb my leg as if it were a tree. I pried him off me and swung him up to my shoulders as Anastasia somersaulted toward me, grabbing my ankle at the last minute before she would have crashed. I sat on the floor next to them and let them climb all over me.  
  
"You're good with children." Nerissa said. "I wouldn't have expected it."  
  
"I grew up in a large family. Some things, one never forgets. Ouch!"  
  
"I can see that," she replied, detaching both children from my hair with difficulty. They had apparently considered it a climbing rope; I may be stronger than most men but my follicles do not share that attribute. David seemed entranced by my chain-mail shirt, and kept feeling the links with his fingertips; I distracted him with a tickling match to keep him from losing a fingertip between the rings. I could see in him both Nerissa and Dylan, her clear bronze skin and oval eyes and his long-boned face, but David's smile was his own, and reminded me most of Trance -- an alarming thought.  
  
Olivia helped Boudicca bring the food to the low table in the middle of the room, from which we all ate, lying on pillows and oversized cushions in comfort. The mothers fed their children while dining themselves, so no one was left out, but there seemed to be more food than I'd expected, even for a banquet, and more room on the floor. I sent an inquiring look at Boudicca, who simply smiled, so I ignored the extra space and concentrated on keeping Seamus from playing pattycake with all of my dinner.  
  
"Hey, you started without me!" Harper came in, without ceremony, and flopped down on the floor next to Ygraine, who handed him a plate of food. "Ah, creamed gotha. Just what I always wanted. So, what's the occasion?"  
  
Boudicca stared him down coolly, as if determining whether to serve him with the second or third course, though her eyes glinted with humor. "Guess."  
  
"Um. Okay. Let me think. You and Olivia have found the long-lost slipstream route to Tarn Vedra? No? You want me to make a new cradle because Seamus Junior, here, climbed out of the old one and broke it?" This was an old joke between them; Harper kept offering to make state-of-the-art baby cradles, and my wives continued to impose ever more stringent design restrictions while coping perfectly well with wearable baby slings; the babies slept with us, of course, or in their own nest nearby.  
  
"How about two more baby cradles?" Morgan asked.  
  
"Two. Two? Hey, that's great! Congratulations!" He was up and bouncing over to hug Boudicca and Morgan immediately, beaming with delight. "Wonderful."  
  
I glanced at Olivia, and recognized the yearning on her face. "It will be soon for you, I'm sure," I said quietly. "Sometimes it takes longer than others."  
  
"I know," Olivia said. "And we don't know what effects being in a black hole for three centuries might have on the human reproductive system; no one else has done it."  
  
Nerissa leaned her head back against a cushion; David, at her breast, was falling asleep while still on the nipple. "Just wait until they start to teethe. It makes you think twice."  
  
"Even so."  
  
"Try this." Ygraine handed Nerissa something round made of leather. "Let me know if it helps." Opened, it was round with a small central hole.  
  
"Ah. A nipple shield. Yes, this should keep me from being bitten quite as much." Nerissa smiled at Ygraine. "I hope you have more of them."  
  
"I'll make more."  
  
I noticed Harper observing Olivia's expression, and I caught his eye and shook my head ever so slightly. He gave me one nod; understood. This was not the time to offer to remedy what was wrong. And, should he be asked, he would have to decline.  
  
It was not a happy situation, not at all.  
  
Later, as Olivia was leaving, I murmured to her, "Talk with Karla." She gave me a doubtful look, picked up David, who slept soundly, and followed Nerissa back to their family quarters where Dylan should be waiting for them.  
  


***

  
  
Boudicca rolled over, her head on my shoulder. "They're unhappy," she whispered. "Do something."  
  
I shook my head.  
  
Harper, with his head on my other shoulder, whispered back, "He can't."  
  
"Why? It only makes sense."  
  
"We can't let Dylan think we're here to undermine him."  
  
"Ah. That again."  
  
"Yes. He has too many memories."  
  
Morgan murmured something sleepy, from behind Harper. "Battle of Hephaestos."  
  
"He was there?" Boudicca was awake now. "Should I talk with him about it, or should Olivia do that for her book?"  
  
"Let it go, for now," I suggested. "It will wait."  
  
"Why?" Once Boudicca found an idea, she pursued it with all her being, just as she had pursued me. "It's ancient history."  
  
"Not to Dylan, it's not. It happened, what, five years ago at most. Right, Tyr?" Harper began to tease his fingers down my leg. I caught his hand in mine to try to still it. Undeterred, he slid the other hand beneath me, eased somewhat by my being turned slightly toward Boudicca, and began to toy with my nether regions. It tickled. I attempted to ignore it, but gave him a warning glare. He grinned back.  
  
"Five years ago. What was I doing then?" Boudicca rolled onto her stomach, considering. "We were living on Adelphia, and I was busy seducing that fourth-cousin-of-a-snake Romulus."  
  
"From Sirrush Pride. Wasn't he the one you said wasn't worth the trouble?" Morgan snorted, and Harper jumped. "Oh, my apologies, Seamus."  
  
"Do it again in a different place and just see what you'll get," he replied.  
  
"Oh, like this?"  
  
Boudicca nodded. "Any man who doesn't say yes when he's asked deserves what he gets."  
  
Harper squirmed away from me and rolled back to tussle playfully with Morgan, fully aware that if she wished she could disable him without breaking a sweat.  
  
"You're cute, Seamus." Morgan wriggled on top of him. "You know why we keep you around?"  
  
"Because I'm cute? Because I make fun toys to play with?"  
  
"Because you always come up with something interesting." Morgan giggled. "Like this." She pounced. He squirmed more.  
  
"And I thought the children were in the other bed," Boudicca commented.  
  
"Oops. Momma spank. Got to behave myself around here." Harper chuckled, and tickled Morgan back to make her squeal.  
  
I smiled to myself in the dark, in the midst of my family. Dylan and his problems could wait. "I thought you were still nursing, and would not catch," I said to Boudicca.  
  
"Apparently, you have surprising powers, husband. I must admit, though, after we see how well Ygraine does with her child, I may want to trip your shieldbrother for the third one."  
  
"Try not to break him, please."  
  
"Hey, people, I'm right here. Ooo. Stop that, Morgan. Ohhhh. No. Don't stop that."  
  
"Where's Ygraine?" I realized, when I reached beyond Boudicca, that we were missing one person.  
  
"Over here, Tyr, playing with the babies," she responded from the next bed, "and watching the show. Morgan, should I give you a few pointers about Seamus?"  
  
"Hey, is that fair?"  
  
"Get used to it, brother, it happens all the time."  
  
"Oh. Yeah. Ohhhhhhhh. I could get used to this. Suggest anything you want, as long as it feels good."  
  


***

  
  
Even after I was forced out into the universe of conflicting desires and taboos, I never understood the absolute passion for privacy in mating that appears to infect many human societies.  
  
It is normal to want to mate, to want to create children, to want to unite with a lover. Why is this so hidden away? If Dylan had, indeed, grown to adulthood in a culture that made such a fetish of separateness, no wonder he was having trouble in his marriage.  
  
Nietzschians see beauty in the body and in its functions. We see beauty in the movement of one body upon and within another; how could it be otherwise? We teach our children to see beauty in it as well as pleasure, to learn the ways of desire and tenderness as well as strength.  
  
At least, this is the way it was among the Kodiak, and, according to my wives, among the Jaguar. It was one of our oldest lifeways. If it has disappeared from the cultures of other prides, no wonder their bloodlines have failed. How could it be otherwise, if they treat as shameful the very thing from which we come and for which we live?  
  
Privacy for contractual affairs, yes. For shikastri, for ritual matters. For some punishments, if matters ever came to that. But not for honest mating within the family.  
  


***

  
  
It was a good thing that both Harper and I were relaxed when we were on the bridge the next day, for that day Charlemagne asked us to go to Earth to deal with the Drago-Kazov.  
  
The situation between Dylan and me had improved to a point where I could ask him mundane, civil questions and receive mundane, civil answers. Considering the previous few days, it was a good sign. Perhaps Dylan had also been cherished by his wives that night, or perhaps he had come to realize that I had, indeed, been attempting to teach him something and not brutalize him.  
  
And perhaps I was wrong about all of it.  
  
Harper was excited, though worried; if he still had relatives on his home planet, they were few and far between. Beka watched him with amusement and concern, emotions I could share. I was not sanguine about our prospective venture; of course, there was no way to get out of it. Much as I wanted to view Harper's homeland, and by extension the source of my own genetic foundation, I also wanted to make sure my children would not be left fatherless.  
  
When I left the bridge for a meal, I detoured to the workshop where Paris Ramses was repairing a set of broken valves for a section of the hydroponics garden. He glanced up at me through his hair when I entered, and acknowledged me with a nod. We had come to a less than formal relationship since he arrived aboard; as heir presumptive to Jaguar Pride, he could consider himself to be nearly on an equal footing with me in terms of social standing, although he still knew I was his elder. And, of course, aboard the Andromeda I was alpha to him because I was alpha of Kodiak Pride-in-residence.  
  
"What can I do for you, Tyr? I should be done here soon." He shook his straight red hair out of his face, and put down his tools. "Something for the children, perhaps?"  
  
"Yes, but not so directly." I steadied myself. "Andromeda, privacy." I touched the door lock; we were sealed in. Before he could react, I continued, "Paris Ramses, beta of Jaguar, I wish to make shikastrin with you, for the future of my children."  
  
He was so young. His narrow face showed shock, then understanding. "If you do not return from Earth --"  
  
"And if Harper does not return, as well. Make sure my family -- Kodiak Pride -- is not destroyed. Will you do this?"  
  
He nodded. "I do owe you my Magog immunity, after all. I'll do it, but only if I can't get you back here to do it yourself."  
  
"I couldn't ask for more." I opened my hands in the formal gesture of offering. "What will you have of me?"  
  
"I prefer to hedge my bets; a little now and more later." He opened his trousers, revealing himself already hard for me, and pulled a small pile of industrial pads onto the floor from a nearby shelf. "You first."  
  
I went to kiss him and paused just before our lips met, with my hand upon him, feeling him pulse. "If I return, and you have failed me, I will kill you. If you have protected my family, sir, you may have of me what you will."  
  
"I will hold you to that, Tyr Anasazi out of Victoria by Barbarossa." His eyes met mine, pale and fierce, and I knew the difference between him and Dylan in the way his mouth took mine as my hand took him, until I stooped to add my lips and tongue to the work of my fingers, tipping him down on the padding along with me.  
  
He tasted salty on my tongue, whetting my appetite, and I was glad I had my whole lunchtime rather than a scant few minutes of break time. Between the strokes of my grip upon him and the sweeping licks I gave him, he was panting soon enough, and reached for my trousers in turn to fasten his own lips upon me and swallow me down. He knew his arts well, taking me quickly but not too quickly, but I knew mine better and restrained myself from ending until I had made him spend himself, gasping my name, and bend back to the task of pulling the rush from me by the power of his tongue and throat, the heat of his passion. (Charlemagne had not lied, months earlier, when he had called Paris a treasure.)  
  
Afterward, I rolled and lay upon him, my weight full length over his, our penises lined up against each other. "And, if something happens to you, to what am I bound?" I asked.  
  
He said nothing for a long time, breathing hard, his heart pounding beneath me in the rhythm with my own. "Protect Beka, that's all."  
  
"I will." I kissed him hard, and he returned the kiss in type, then scrambled to our feet and refastened our clothes. "Andromeda, end privacy mode."  
  
"Tyr."  
  
I turned back at his voice, at the door. "What?"  
  
"Anything. Remember." He rubbed his hand on his flank, and I knew he remembered our previous encounter well. He had sucked Charlemagne dry while I had been driving him wild, in him to the hilt and teasing him in every way possible. There was no reason why he should have to suffer to take his medicine.  
  
I smiled at him. "I won't forget."  
  
I had time to grab a fast sandwich and bottled water and consume them on the walk back to the bridge.  
  


***

  
  
When had I become such an individualist? Shikastri with Arch-Duke Charlemagne Bolivar was one thing, but with a boy years younger than myself? Why should I bind myself to his destiny?  
  
The questions bothered me. They floated in the back of my mind, emerging at odd moments as I glanced around the bridge, noting the sweet angle of Beka's neck as she leaned over the boards, or the light step that was Trance as she went to one of the formerly unused stations at the back and sat down to examine ... something. She could have done her work with the computer anywhere on the ship. Why was she there? What did that gain her? Or us?  
  
And that brought me back to thinking of my own behavior, and how it had changed in such a short time. I wished, not for the first time, that it was still possible for me to talk with Barbarossa about how he had adjusted to family life after his time as an independent warrior -- but he had never lived outside the existence of Kodiak Pride. Would he even have understood my concerns?  
  


***

  
  
"Oh, Harper!" Trance gazed in delight at the blue-green planet streaked with clouds that turned in the distance. "It's beautiful. Why didn't you tell me it was so beautiful?"  
  
Harper shrugged, but his face looked wistful. "The last time I saw it from this angle, I was leaving on the Maru. I wasn't in any condition to notice."  
  
Morgan raised an eyebrow at him, as if she could not believe anyone had never been off planet. She turned back to the viewscreen. "Has Ygraine see this? I think she might want to look at the cloud patterns. She was saying something about wanting new design from nature; people have been asking for more things like this on the clothes. Swirls, colors. Did you know that the Silurians see blue as if it were fluorescent purple? Interesting difference in perceptions." She scrutinized the grayish-white swirls on the blue ball before us. "Very nice mathematical representation of chaotic systems. Rommie, would you please send a copy of this view to my workstation? I'd like to examine the mathematics."  
  
"Certainly." Rommie nodded. "We have several views of Earth from historical times, but it appears that the wind patterns have shifted significantly; I'll send them all to you." She paused. "I don't suppose she might need another model for the next fashion show?"  
  
Despite my concerns about Dylan, and the impending trip to the planet's surface, I suppressed a snort. Before encountering the Andromeda and its crew, I would never have expected to see a ship's avatar interested in being a fashion model -- or one who was comely enough to do it well. Then again, most computerized avatars I'd encountered resembled me far more than they did her. I doubted that even Ygraine's most fetching fashions would appear the same if I were to model them -- not that I would, considering they had few if any places to conceal necessary weapons.  
  
"I'll ask her. She should be here later." Morgan picked up her pad and went to sit at a workstation.  
  
It had surprised me, early on, that so many functional stations had been created to duplicate tasks that the automated ship could do without assistance, but I appreciated the opportunity for multiple redundant systems. Anything could go wrong, and often had done so, despite Harper's long hours of work to keep the ship in shape. Now that Paris, Ygraine and Morgan were available to assist him, or work with him on new projects, the ship was in much better shape, and Rommie herself appeared younger and happier, though that, too, might only have been a figment of my imagination.  
  
Beka entered the bridge and stood next to me, watching the monitor. "I'd thought Dylan was going to just drop you and Harper off and head for somewhere else," she said quietly. "What made him change his mind?"  
  
"Oh, was that the latest plan?" I murmured back. "Since when has the captain ever told us what he's thinking?" Drop us off without warning on a planet that Harper had not seen in nearly a decade? My stomach roiled at the thought. I brought the changed geographical data onscreen at my station and surveyed the shoreline for evidence of the old cities that Harper had described for me, one long night before Ultima Thule when the Magog larvae had kept him awake. Boston, New York, Deecee, San Francisco, Los Angeles, St. Petersburg, Rome, Tokyo, Singapore.  
  
All had vanished underwater.  
  
"Good point." Beka frowned at the controls at her own station. "Rommie, why am I getting a red light on this panel? Please don't tell me the ship's external surveillance is off line."  
  
"Harper, what major cities were not on coastlines?" I asked.  
  
"Paris is making an adjustment, or so they tell me." The avatar frowned from the monitor. "It should be done by now. It's a different method of sensitizing the hull, so that even if something interdimensional touches the ship we'll know," Andromeda said.  
  
Beka went to her station, shaking her head."They'd better be through with it soon. I'd rather know what's happening before it reaches us."  
  
"What's up, Tyr? Show me." Harper stepped up where Beka had been, to peer over my arm at the maps on the console. "Man. Looks like major cataclism time; the San Andreas Fault must have made a break for it." His fingertip skimmed the left side of the continent, then moved inland and pointed. "Okay. Mexico City should be here." Point and down. "Buenos Aires, here." He peered at the mountains. "Denver, here." His finger moved back to the right, near the amorphous shape of an inland waterway. "Ottawa was here and Toronto, here. They used to be part of a different country but when the Dragans took over it didn't matter any more. I think something's still there, but it looks like they're a lot smaller than before."  
  
"Weird." Beka gazed at the screen. "It looks a whole lot bluer down there than it did when I picked up Harper, about ten years ago. Is that possible?"  
  
"I don't see any evidence of polar icecaps," I mused. "And most of the coastlines are different."  
  
Without warning, three plumes of white smoke blossomed from Earth, heading toward us.  
  
"Somebody down there doesn't like us." I targeted the sources of the missiles, mountainous areas on three continents, but none of them near the old cities Harper was still trying to find for me.  
  
Beka slid into the pilot's seat. "Taking evasive action. Harper, get the sensors back online now!"  
  
"They're on, boss." He scowled. "How rude can they be? We didn't even say anything nasty yet."  
  
The missiles looked like the same sort of surface-to-air rockets I'd seen the Dragans use since I was a child. If so, it would make them equally child's play to blow up; the Dragans had learned the hard way, by inadvertently destroying Anthem, their second homeworld, that allowing radioactive fallout to drench their planet resulted in far more death and suffering than even my people were willing to endure. I hoped for our sake the message had sunken in; I had no desire to take a radiation bath.  
  
"Exploding attacking missiles," I said, pressing the panel to release the charges. They blew up with small, satisfactory explosions, leaving no appreciable increase in toxic radiation -- which pleased me. Perhaps the Dragans had learned something useful. "Targeting missile sources and preparing to fire."  
  
"Hold on that." It was Dylan, coming onto the bridge. "I'd like to talk with them first."  
  
"By all means, Captain, but it does no harm to remind them that we need not take their apparent dislike of us for granted -- or at all." I shot him a glance to remind him why we were there, and he nodded, his eyes narrowed. At least he was paying attention.  
  
He looked strained, but his manner was professional. Still, he had seen more action in his past three than in his previous life, and, regardless of any recent influence of mine, was no longer the politically naive man who had survived the Dark Night in the black hole's time suspension.  
  
No one would think this Dylan either innocent or inexperienced, at anything. If I had influenced that change, I had done something right, no matter what else happened.  
  
"Open a channel to the planet. Keep it tight on me." Dylan stepped into the command position. "This is Captain Dylan Hunt of the Systems Commonwealth heavy cruiser Andromeda Ascendant to the leader of the Drago-Kazov on Earth. Cease firing unless you want to die quickly."  
  
A scowling man with heavy features and sharp eyes scowled at us from the display -- Nietzschian by his forearm spikes, Dragan by his clothing, but no one I could recall seeing before -- and he was fat. Overweight Nietzschians commonly do not live long; the fact that this man lived, and occupied an apparently influential position, meant that he must have extremely indulgent relatives. "Commonwealth? There is no commonwealth. If you're from that so-called alliance with the Jaguars, you have no business here."  
  
I snorted, as quietly as possible to avoid being overheard by anyone other than Harper. Stupid Nietzschians lived even shorter lives than fat, out-of-shape ones. Obviously the Dragan genetic lines had decayed further than even I had anticipated.  
  
"On the contrary, we have a great deal of business," Dylan said firmly. "We are here in pursuit of the members of the Drago-Kazov who allied themselves with Magog rather than with their own people. We're also here to enforce a truce between the Nietzschians and humans on this planet. You will hear us, or else."  
  
The man scoffed. "You and whose army?"  
  
Dylan raised an eyebrow, but kept his voice level. "I could, if I wished, call back the entire Allied Fleet, which includes Sabra, Jaguar, Sirrush and Atreus prides, as well as many other systems, but I thought I'd give you a chance to tell us your side of the story first." The Dragan sneered; Dylan continued, his face hardening. "Believe me, if I had decided to destroy the planet that at the start of our conversation you'd already be dust and electrons. And, as a matter of courtesy, I'd like to know the name of the person I'm about to blow up."  
  
I sent him a short, sharp nod of approval. Dylan had indeed learned Nietzschian ways of speech and thought. By pushing for a name, he gave notice that he considered this encounter important and worthy of the formal mode of speech. It raised the stakes from those of a minor security problem to those of an official duel or a war. If the stupid man onscreen did not answer such a challenge satisfactorily, his own side would deal with him before we would have to.  
  
The man gaped. Before he could speak, he was shouldered out of view by another Dragan, perhaps ten standard years younger and fifteen kilos lighter. "I am Xenophon DeGaulle, out of Maeve by Set, alpha of Drago-Kazov. State your request." His voice sounded almost metallic, as if he had suppressed emotion to the point where he no longer acknowledged its existence. The Andromeda, on her worst day, sound more alive than this.  
  
And I knew this voice. I had heard it before.  
  
It took effort to maintain what Harper called my "stone face" while a wave of red washed over my eyes, as if I viewed the screen through a haze of blood. I had not known Xenophon DeGaulle's name when I saw him, long ago, but I'd vowed never to forget his face or the thin hard voice I had heard.  
  
"As I have said," Dylan replied tersely, "I am here in pursuit of the Dragans and Kazov who allied themselves with Magog during the battle in Ultima Thule. I'm also here to negotiate a change of government on this planet between the Nietzschians and the humans." Dylan shifted his weight onto the leg that was slightly behind, a sign he was losing patience.  
  
I keyed the panel that would tell me Charlemagne Bolivar's location, should Dylan want to contact him to come immediately, though I knew as I did it that the movement was foolish; Dylan would neither back down nor ask for help this time. But Charlemagne was still only as far away as a com link, should we -- or I -- wish to talk with him.  
  
Dylan observed Xenophon coolly, as if considering whether he was worth the cost of purchase. "Now, personally, I have no great interest in killing you, but I don't think you should push my hand, considering that I have tactical missiles aimed at all the Nietzschian command posts, and not just on your continent." He signaled Rommie to expand the view that Xenophon would see to the entire bridge crew.  
  
"You're aware, of course, that should you fire those missiles you'd be condemning to death millions of the kludges you seem to value." Xenophon achieved a sneer, despite his neutral tone, but his eyes wandered, taking in the bridge and the mix of people: human, Nietzschian and Trance Gemini. I spared a thought for Rev Bem, and wished briefly that he were still alive and here as well, if only to scramble the Dragan's mind a little further. Did the man's eyes widen when he saw me?  
  
"You're already killing them," Dylan replied calmly. "If I get rid of you in the process, I think they'll approve."  
  
Xenophon laughed. "I like you, human. You've got a good sense of humor. Give me a few minutes to locate the renegades you're seeking."  
  
Dylan pressed the panel. "You have their descriptions, and two minutes. Andromeda out."  
  
I stared at the monitor, the image of Xenophon DeGaulle burned into my eyes. He had noted my existence but had not, I think, recognized me.  
  
I had been so young, then.  
  
"Comments? Reactions? Tyr?" Dylan's voice seemed to come from a long way away. "Tyr?"  
  
I blinked hard, once, and turned to him. "He won't give them up. He's using the time to figure out strategy, and find out where your weak points are."  
  
"You know him?" Beka's face showed concern for me. "You've dealt with him before."  
  
"I doubt if he remembers it." I shifted my shoulders uneasily beneath the chain mail; this was not a time for me to become entangled in old memory. Memories like that, ones stored in muscle and bone, could cripple my reactions if I let them rule me. "I suggest, captain, that we spend our time in evaluating their situation rather than in exploring my past."  
  
Dylan stared at me, his eyes narrowed, then nodded sharply. "Beka, Trance. I need information on the location of the human populations in relation to the Dragan war centers. Anything you can give me."  
  
"If you will excuse me for a moment, sir." I left the bridge. Behind me, I felt rather than heard Morgan move to the fire control station, as Harper's footsteps followed me out. I had trained her myself, as backup fire control officer, with Dylan's blessing, as she was the best suited to planning and executing defense strategies. She had programmed into the Andromeda several new strategies for deploying weapons that had rescued us during our last battle with renegade Dragans, three weeks ago, as well as designing and installing the new hyperdrive with Harper and Paris. She would do well until I could return.  
  
I did not want to think about that, not now.  
  


****

  
  
I stopped four paces beyond the door and leaned against the bulkhead in the passageway. My skin felt as if it had been set on fire, with a burning that radiated out from my bones but the bones themselves were cold. Old anger had taken me that way occasionally, but never as powerfully. I leaned into the support of the bulkhead to keep from falling.  
  
As a child, I had been told that I looked so like my father that I would grow to be his twin. How could Xenophon have seen me and not realized he was looking at a ghost of the man he had murdered?  
  
"Hey. You're not all right, are you?" Harper's voice seemed to reach me from a greater distance than Dylan's had, though I could feel the heat from his body within the zone of friendship. "You want me to tell Dylan to put Beka in your place for now?"  
  
"No. Morgan can do the job." The red haze was clearing from my sight, gradually. I could see a small, central area where Harper stood that looked normal. He reached out a hand toward me but I stopped him with a gesture that did not quite reach him. "Don't. Please."  
  
"Can I do anything?" He held still, understanding at least that he was neither the cause of this emotion nor, probably, its solution.  
  
"I don't know." It was the honest truth. I had no idea whether he could do anything that would help me, or if I could be helped. Perhaps help from anyone on shipboard would be impossible, for this. "Go back in. Tell Dylan I will be there in a moment. Rommie will need you." I could feel the haze closing in again as I thought of facing Xenophon. "Don't touch me; I'm not safe."  
  
"Okay."  
  
"And tell Dylan he needs Paris Ramses on the bridge, if only to prove the alliance." Paris had taken to wearing one or another of the new uniforms that my wife Ygraine designed, but had retained his gauntlets to show his origin within Jaguar Pride. Xenophon would certainly notice them as he would notice my own.  
  
He left, not without one more worried look back. I forced my breathing to slow, to calm. I recalled my father's deep voice at home, teaching me meditations that would restrain my rage and channel it into more useful forms.  
  
One breath, feeling my heart pound and my blood racing; another breath, and the beating of my heart slowing every so little; a third breath, gaining control ... rational thought and action would gain us more than pure anger, however noble. I unclenched my fists to retract the forearm spines slightly, so no one on the bridge would be harmed inadvertently when I returned.  
  
And I walked back out onto the bridge to meet the enemy I had sought for more than half my life. How ironic it was that my enemy and Harper's -- and Dylan's -- were one and the same, and that the man who had destroyed my home was the same one who now reigned over the desolation of Harper's planet as well.  
  
When I returned the bridge had been cleared of anyone who might give away our status as a family vessel; Morgan and Olivia wore work clothes that gave them equal status, visually, with everyone else, and their gauntlets were well in view, proclaiming their membership in Kodiak Pride and Jaguar Pride.  
  
Harper nodded to me; message to Dylan delivered. Paris Ramses had arrived and was working with Beka, highly visible to the viewscreen. Paris nodded to me and went to the auxiliary battle station that Rev Bem had once staffed.  
  
The red haze over my eyes remained, but I could control it. I immersed myself in my work and let myself listen to the continuing discussion as if it did not matter.  
  
"Dylan, you don't really intend to destroy all the Nietzschian command centers." That was Trance, still and always on the side of the alternative -- usually the unexpected one. "Not when it can kill other people too."  
  
"Trance, this is not the time --"  
  
"Look." She put a diagram onscreen. "There and there and there. And all those other places. Those are ammunition dumps. Vehicle storage facilities. Equipment and supplies that would be guarded by Nietzschians alone. And here." She pointed at something in an arid, desolate area in a long chain of inland mountains. "Lots of missiles there."  
  
"No." Harper interrupted her. "Don't blow that one up."  
  
"Why not?" Dylan asked, startled at Harper's comment. Beka turned in her seat to stare at him, surprise on her face.  
  
"Radiation. That's the Cheyenne missile storage area. It was a top-secret site for nuclear missile storage hundreds of years ago, and it was so well hidden that the Nietzschians never found out how to get in."  
  
"And you know this because?" Dylan was skeptical.  
  
"Look at the readings. Are there any Nietzschians there? Is anyone there, even underground?"  
  
"There may be a few small farmers, in the hills, but I'd say he's right," Rommie commented. "I detect no evidence of humans of any sort in that region, at least not in the kind of numbers that the Dragans prefer. I do, however, detect radiation leaks. If you want to destroy the planet, I can hit it there; otherwise, not a good idea."  
  
"What about the other sites?"  
  
"No problem." Harper shrugged. "You know my opinion."  
  
"Which is?"  
  
Harper's face set, hard. "I want the slavers off my planet." He carefully did not look at any of the Nietzschians on the bridge. "This isn't genocide, it's liberation. I want Earth to be free to make its own way again. If that means blowing up the command centers, you do it."  
  
"Harper --" Trance, distressed, reached a hand toward him; he ignored it.  
  
"Let him be." My voice came out as more of a growl than I intended, but I was not sorry. "He has a right to his emotions." I braced my hands against the workstation panel and felt the spurs in my forearms flicking in and out of position, like knives. Click-click. Click-click.  
  
Rommie broke the tension. "He's back."  
  
Xenophon appeared onscreen. "I've checked, and nobody seems to have seen or heard anything of Dragans or Kazov who were anywhere near Ultima Thule. Perhaps you have the wrong planet?"  
  
"Somehow, I don't think so." Dylan said. "And if you're hiding them, you're making the wrong choice." He cut his hand across his throat to end transmission. "Tyr, take out the ammunition dumps in the first three places on the list."  
  
I paused fractionally, my finger on the button. "Captain. You do realize that the second site on the list is underwater. The explosion there could result in a tidal wave that would destroy the neighboring cities for several hundred miles."  
  
"Harper?" Dylan asked.  
  
Harper shook his head. "You're aiming at what used to be Houston. Even in my time, the only people left there were Dragans on vacation. I say do it."  
  
"You heard him."  
  
I flicked my finger across the controls. I did not know these places, or their history, but I wished, briefly, that I had seen them in their prime, before my kind had ever reached this planet with intent. Houston. Mockba. A site in the desert near a place that Harper insisted on calling Casablanca, though none of the views I had called up showed any sign of white houses in the region. An entire southern continent that appeared to have humans but no Nietzschians, but seemed as inhospitable to them as Fountainhead had been when Paul Museveni first came there to create the Nietzschians; it also appeared to have no recent cities at all, since the water rose, which marked it as a possible vacation spot for me but totally useless for any more purposeful foray.  
  
So much was gone. The edge of red haze faced from my eyes. I drew a deep breath. It would return, I knew.  
  
Click-click.  
  
"Now we wait." Dylan viewed the planet below and the globe projection on adjoining viewscreens. "Everyone. Mr. Harper. Suggestions?"  
  
"I don't suppose the Dragans did anything as sensible as simply taking over existing major cities?" Beka asked.  
  
"Well, yeah, originally, but global warming kind of stopped that. Believe it or not, we used to have land all over the place that isn't available any more." Harper passed his hands over the coastlines. "Cities from here to here, and more from here to there. Over here, they were in these places. When the water rose too high, the Dragans decided to build mountaintop regional control areas with slave labor." He pointed at places inland, close enough to be able to exert force easily over the older cities while secure from any assault by sea. "Of course, there weren't that many of us natives still living there anyway; we know enough to move when the water rises." His voice soured. "When we can, that is."  
  
"Given this, where do you think your people will be?" Dylan considered the population centers that the ship put on view.  
  
"I don't even know how many are left, Dylan." Harper screwed up his eyes and stared at the view and the map. He turned suddenly. "Trance, you tell me. Where are my people?"  
  
Trance shifted from one foot to the other as she stared intently at the screen. "Your people as in your family, or as in humans?"  
  
"Either. Both."  
  
"Here." She ran a finger up along the mountains. "Caves here. Some along the big lakes in the center. A lot in the farmland -- Nietzschians don't like farming -- and over here." She touched the large, fairly flat areas in the center of the continents, and skidded over a few places that, on the older maps, had been urban centers. "People are here, but it's hard to tell."  
  
"The midwest. The Ukraine. Europe." Harper's eyes seemed to blur. "What about here?" He indicated two small islands above the area he called Europe.  
  
Trance shook her head. "Not many. No Nietzschians there, though. It might be a starting place, if you need one, or a hideout."  
  
"And they said there'd always be an England." Harper grimaced. "And Ireland forever."  
  
"My father said his family came from a little place .. there." Beka pointed at a knob barely protruding from the water, in a six-times-magnified view. "Or there. I always meant to visit."  
  
"You wouldn't have liked it, Beka; it rained all the time," Harper told her.  
  
"Well, sir?" I turned my attention to Dylan. "What do you have in mind?"  
  
"That depends on the response from below." Dylan looked from me to Harper. "Harper, are you sure you want to do this?"  
  
"I'm going. I have to." Harper's hand clenched on the edge of the workstation, his knuckles slowly turning ivory. "You can't expect me to stay here."  
  
"No, I can't. You'd probably take the Kali Ma anyway, so do it. You and Tyr." Dylan's eyes met mine. "Do you trust me, Tyr?"  
  
It was the one question I had hoped he would never ask me. Fortunately, he had phrased it in such a way that I could choose how formally I wished to answer it.  
  
"I trust you to be Dylan Hunt of the High Guard," I said slowly, "just as you trust me to be Tyr Anasazi of Kodiak Pride. And I trust you with my family." I hoped that he did not notice the flickering glance of approval that Paris sent me from behind Beka.  
  
Dylan nodded slowly. "I think we understand each other. Here's what I want you to do."  
  


***

  
  
"Dylan's doing a bit better today, don't you think?" Harper glanced back over his shoulder at me as he piloted the Kali Ma behind the Andromeda and readied it for the drop to the planet. "He's sane, steady, even thoughtful."  
  
"Maybe his wives have taught him something." I frowned. Something about our last exchange with Dylan before leaving the ship made me concerned, but I could not pin it down. Perhaps I was too critical.  
  
"Or maybe he realized you were right. He'll never admit it, though." Harper threw the switch for the transdimensional cloak that he and Morgan had installed. "I've got the feeling you aren't telling me something."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"Because you're not sitting down getting ready for drop."  
  
"You know me too well." I slid into the adjacent seat and strapped myself in. "I made sure Pride Kodiak would have a little extra insurance before I left."  
  
"Hmm. Do I want to know about this?"  
  
"Probably not."  
  
"Okay. I can go with that. It's officially Not My Problem right now. I'll worry about it later."  
  
We paused for what seemed an interminable time, though it was only a few moments, and waited as a small flotilla of what appeared to be the debris of ancient satellites glided past us. Harper slid us into its orbit at speed, and we cruised over the edge of the globe away from the Andromeda.  
  
"It'll be a rough ride; Kali Ma can't take too much of this. The ship's not built for this kind of atmosphere." He slipped a glance at me into his work. "What's wrong? You don't think we can find the leaders of humanity, foment a revolution and depose the Dragans in a day or so?"  
  
The ride was indeed rough. I braced myself with one hand and braced him with the other. "Let's say I have a somewhat different agenda than Captain Hunt."  
  
"Uh-huh, and his cards aren't all out on the table, either. Can't tell the game without a cheat sheet. Ouch!"  
  
We came out of a bank of clouds, skidded past a panoramic, unreal landscape of red rock, and came to ground next to and almost inside one of the rusty-looking towers. The landscape was harsh, dry, unyielding. "All the comforts of home," I said.  
  
"You've got to be kidding."  
  
"Actually, no. This looks very much the way my people's homeworld once did."  
  
"You know, that explains far too much."  
  
The temperature was not as hot as I had expected; apparently we had arrived in spring, from the fluffs of greenery in evidence in small cracks and crevices. Good; it would signal the presence of water for us. "Do you have any idea where we are?"  
  
"All I know is it's not where I wanted us to be." He checked a map. "We were supposed to land in western Kansas; not a lot of population but the old rail transportation system was big there and we could have found ways to get anywhere. But it seems the Dragans figured that out, too, and were playing with big toys there, so I decided to get out of the game."  
  
"Good thought." I pulled on my pack, and handed him his. "I suppose we're nowhere near Cheyenne Mountain?"  
  
"About a thousand kilometers that way, give or take a few, and not allowing for landscape. Not that it would do us any good -- oh, wait, you've got enhanced immunity to radiation sickness too, don't you?"  
  
"I could have done something creative with what's there, yes."  
  
He shut the hatch behind us.  
  
"Sorry, but no go. Just getting near the place would do me in. Of course, you could go there without me when I'm fomenting the revolution. Eww. Why does that always sound like some sort of illness that requires warm compresses and bed rest?"  
  
I shook my head. "We have other alternatives. Let's see what's available here before we leave; I'd hate to think we might miss something useful. This isn't a completely natural cave."  
  
"Especially something the Dragans don't know about." He was perking up. "I don't think they ever got over here much, and if they did, they didn't stick around. Maybe it was so much like home it made them homesick?"  
  
"We could only hope." It certainly wasn't a natural cave. I realized we were wasting time exploring it but my instincts told me I would be far more sorry later on if we had not done so. "Have you ever been here before?"  
  
"No way. It's not exactly on the Grand Tour."  
  
"It should be. Look." I shone the hand light into the corner: five Ttalianis discus ships were lined up by the wall, as if put there by valet parking.  
  
"Oh, mama! The Dragans never saw these, that's for sure. Discus ships! I didn't think they existed any more."  
  
"They don't, but I used to play in something very much like this as a child." I remembered the odd-shaped seats and the switches that seemed to be constructed for hands with too few or too many fingers, all of different shapes than mine. "If they're still working, I think we've found our transportation across the planet."  
  
"Fine by me. Didn't they have some sort of primitive cloaking device that let them change shape or look like they changed shape? That would be fun to play with." He caught my eye. "Yeah, yeah, I know we're not playing. Doesn't mean I can't have fun."  
  
"Oh, I expect to have a great deal of fun before we're through here," I told him.  
  


***

  
  
Dylan's orders had been simple: find Earth's human leaders, arrange an uprising, let him know the timing so he could provide support from orbit, and get out of there as soon as the humans had taken back the planet. As the only Nietzschian more or less sympathetic to the slaves' situation, I could certainly see his point, especially since Harper was the only one who could point out that I was on their side and not a Dragan spy.  
  
His more subtle agenda, of course, gambled on his being rid of me and thus lessening the possibility of a Kodiak Pride uprising on his ship -- despite the powerful restraints of the New Commonwealth charter and the alliance with Charlemagne. If he kept thinking along these lines I would have to think of him as far more Nietzschian than before, and far less predictable.  
  
My agenda, which only Harper might have guessed, was far more direct. It notched in nicely with Dylan's orders, assisted the human revolution, and delivered me of half a lifetime of nightmares with swift simplicity: Kill Xenophon de Gaulle, who had murdered my family and sold me into slavery.  
  
It was my right, as a Kodiak and as the only survivor of the massacre, to seek justice. When revenge and justice met and kissed and made sweet love, it made the prospect even more inviting.  
  
I would deal with Dylan Hunt's probable reaction later.  
  


***

  
  
"You know, all the time I was a kid we used to hear these stories about UFOs, from back in the old days, but nobody knew for sure," Harper had found a way to unlock the discus's hatch, and was busily acclimating himself to the controls. "Then, after I got aboard the Maru, we stopped off at the ship museum at Drydock, and I got a look at these, and I just knew this is what they were talking about."  
  
"You had visits from the Ttoliani? When?"  
  
"The records go a long way back. Hundreds of years, maybe thousands, definitely way before Earth had any kind of off-planet exploration." He leaned forward to reach a control. "Why did these guys have to have such long arms?"  
  
"Mind if I have a look around the rest of the hangar?"  
  
"What, you don't trust me with my new shiny toy?"  
  
I leaned down to kiss him. "I trust you with a great deal more than that, as you are well aware. I want to see what else we might find of use."  
  
"Be my guest. I'll try not to go interstellar on you without warning."  
  
"I'd appreciate that. If you did, of course, I'd have to pilot the Kali Ma."  
  
"Oh, we can't have that."  
  


***

  
  
As I scanned the cave carefully -- there had been no indications of living beings other than myself and Harper, but that was no reason to be careless of possible traps -- I remembered the way we had scavenged the Andromeda herself within the past two years. Early on, Beka, Trance and Harper had taken on the task of sorting and clearing away the possessions of those who had abandoned ship at the Battle of Hephaestus, three centuries earlier. They salvaged what could be saved, sold whatever might have value and put personal memorabilia into storage in case we ever encountered relatives.  
  
I had gone through the property of the Nietzschian crew members, as the requirements of pride made it different for us. It wasn't a matter of sentiment, but of practicality -- I knew more of what might have been intended by their original owners than others would. It did not matter that, as a result of the rebellion these Nietzschians had masterminded there were, in most cases, no surviving members of their prides to which their property could be given. They had been Nietzschians; that was what mattered. What they had learned and known of the universe in their time could only help me in mine. Since then I had read every one of their data chips and flexpads, compiling by bits and pieces an impression of worlds and lives I could never know.  
  
Anything that was reusable in this latter-day of poverty should be reused; anything that had no apparent current use should be stored or sold, in case it would be useful later.  
  
This recycling of the personal was not the prevailing Nietzschian attitude I was taught as a son of Barbarossa, but Barbarossa never lived as I did, isolated from my own kind, and too often forced to poverty between contracts. He would have understood contracts for mercenary services -- such a contract was, after all, what the Nietzschian Alliance claimed it had made with the Commonwealth, once upon a time -- but he would never have accepted the poverty, or understood the need to use, reuse, make do or do without that accompanied the hard times.  
  
Barbarossa never lived as a slave. He had never been poor. He had never, until the moment of his death, been powerless to affect the shape of the universe.  
  
I could only be glad that he had died before he could have seen me in the mines, or serving in the bed of my master on Kotyra. He would not have understood the changes those experiences make in one's view of the world. Kodiaks have never been the same as other prides; we pursued knowledge and understanding as well as conquest, and the knowledge I gained, even at such a price, still benefitted me. I would like to think that, as Nietzsche taught, it had made me stronger as well -- even while it had made me a stranger in a strange land, without a home of my own.  
  


***

  
  
"Find anything else?"  
  
"These." I dumped an armload of assorted antique weapons on the deck. "There are more, of course, but no AG carts."  
  
Harper climbed (with difficulty) out of the pilot's seat and crouched beside the long cases and the bag I'd dropped next to them. "You know how old some of these are?"  
  
"Older than the Commonwealth?"  
  
"Probably. I'd be willing to bet they date from the Third War, sometime around 2020. Way before the Magog, back when the Anarchy set in out here. It's probably some survivalist's stash. You think they're still any good?"  
  
I scanned them with a reader set to detect explosive substances. "They look good to me." The long-barreled guns were unrusted, their metal blued as if they had only now emerged from factory packaging. The brass-coated ammunition shone yellow, its coatings unaffected by time. "These might be a little ... iffy." I passed a hand over a crate of grenades. "Let's just say I wouldn't wait as long before throwing one as I might have a few hundred years ago."  
  
"Good enough for me. I'll help you with the rest."  
  
"What about filling another discus?"  
  
Harper shook his head. "While you were out scouting I checked the others; this is the only one that seems to work. But that's not entirely a bad thing; back in historical times it was a lot more common to see only one of these at a time."  
  
"So any view of two or more might lead someone to wonder what was going on with the military -- "  
  
"While one UFO could always be ignored." He smiled. "I'm so counting on being ignored."  
  
"I'm all for it, myself." We heaved the last two boxes into the discus. "Where are we going first?"  
  
"I'd like to check in with Dylan, but I'm not sure how good an idea that is right now. It's getting on toward night; we need to get going. Besides, Rommie was tracking where we landed, so if she sees something different leaving there she'll think to scan before firing."  
  
That ship cared little about my welfare, though I knew it seemed to harbor feelings for Harper. "And we're going where?"  
  
"Give me a break; it's not like I have up-to-date maps from the Commonwealth Cartographic Guild. For one thing, the Ttoliani didn't use maps. Instead, they used sensors that can scan a landscape and evaluate any lifeforms present -- pretty advanced in a ship as old as this."  
  
"Can it tell the difference between Nietzschians and humans?"  
  
"For all I know, it can't tell the difference between cactus and cattle; we'll just have to find out, won't we?"  
  
I shook my head. "Join the Commonwealth and see the universe. I don't suppose this little ship of joy has any defensive systems?"  
  
"On your left, second set of controls from the top. I haven't a clue what they do, but they looked kind of deadly."  
  
The second set of controls certainly had the familiar configuration of controls designed to fit the hand for firing; when I wrapped my fingers around one, a recognizable target grid materialized in front of me. I sincerely hoped I wouldn't have to use it, as I had no notion what kind of weapon it guided or how well it was aimed.  
  
"I'm ready. How about you?" I asked.  
  
"Yep. Oh, wait a minute."  
  
"What?"  
  
"I've got to name it."  
  
"Call it whatever you want, just get going."  
  
"No, it's a kind of ritual. I learned it from Beka. It's something I do the first time I pilot any new ship." He closed his eyes briefly and held his breath as I waited, exercising patience. When he opened his eyes, he smiled.  
  
"What?"  
  
"The good ship Ezekiel's Wheel, ready for takeoff."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"From the outside this looks a little like like two wheels, doesn't it?" He raised an eyebrow, waiting for my nod. "There's an old song about a ship where 'one wheel turns by faith, and the other wheel turns by the grace of God, a wheel in a wheel, way up in the middle of the air.'"  
  
"God is dead," I reminded him.  
  
"So? Have faith in the engineer, then."  
  
"What, you're calling me a Deist now?" But I was amused by his choice, all the same.  
  


***

  
  
We ate a snack from the supplies we'd brought, a few bites to keep us going as we skidded over the rocky ground, never straying far above the tops of the few bushes and plants that grew.  
  
"You expected the discus ships." I said it as a fact.  
  
"I expected something."  
  
"That's why you went there instead of somewhere else."  
  
"Lucky guess."  
  
"Nobody has that much luck."  
  
"Well..." His voice trailed off, but he shrugged. "There were stories of a secret government military base in the desert where UFOs and aliens were kept and studied. They went way back, some of them. After the Nietzschians showed up, between Magog attacks, I heard stories about how all the good stuff had been moved somewhere less visible -- the original place it was all stored was a dry lake bed with aircraft runways 11 km long -- and then, afterward, I didn't hear anything about it at all, so I figured the stuff was still there, somewhere. It's a big countryside."  
  
"And you knew it was there ... why?"  
  
"I had the Kali Ma scan for the metals they used; they're not found in that combination on Earth most places, and definitely not in that area."  
  
I nodded. "I'm not fond of secret government military bases myself."  
  
"Really? I thought you used them for target practice."  
  
"Occasionally. What about modern military bases out here?"  
  
Harper shook his head. "Not too likely. The Dragans either blew up the aerospace bases when they took over, or killed off all the staff and pilots. And then they have to start all over from scratch to build what they want. Guess they never learned about 'waste not, want not.'"  
  
"Conservation does not figure largely in Dragan education."  
  
"You mean someone teaches them to be that stupid?"  
  
"Hard to believe, isn't it?"  
  
"Amazing. Anyway, they got rid of what was there, brought in their own 'superior technology' and ignored what was left, most of which wasn't worth looking at any more..." Harper's smile turned predatory. "With a few exceptions, such as this. I think it was worth scavenging maps of Earth for years, and checking on what's been found where, just in case I ever got to come back."  
  
I nodded. "My compliments on your research."  
  
"Thank you, thank you." He beamed a crooked smile at me.  
  
"Where are we going?"  
  
Harper leaned back in the pilot's seat, which looked more like a broken commode than anything else. It made me wonder exactly what configuration of body parts might actually be comfortable in those particular ergonomically designed seats for hours on end. At least they were padded.  
  
The ship darted, dropped, and suddenly hovered over an area that was significantly lower than the rest of the landscape. It stopped. We were hovering over what seemed to be a pattern of circles within other circles, all human-made; I could not estimate the age, but they looked older than anything else I'd ever seen on the planet.  
  
"Let me rephrase. Seamus, where are we?"  
  
"Really good question. Let me think about this. We're not over the Grand Canyon. This isn't the Great Salt Lake or even the Great Lakes. And it's not the Big Muddy, the Okeefenokee swamp or even Mount Doom. Can you tell that my geography is a little rusty?" His finger strayed over the boards. "Maybe Mr. Round-and-Shiny can tell us what this is."  
  
"Do you have any idea what you're doing?" I couldn't help a trace of annoyance; we were supposed to be contacting the planet's indigenous population instead of joyriding over what would seem to be primordial fishtanks if they had been anywhere near water -- which they, and we, were not.  
  
"Of course I do. Sort of. Well, I would if we were in the Kali Ma." He pressed a control. "This has to be it. No. No, don't do that. Oh, shit."  
  
The ship settled itself into one of the holes as if it had been created to do so, and shut itself off.  
  
Nothing Harper or I could do would get it moving again, though the combined force of the obscenities we threw at it while working should have had some effect, if voice alone could have moved it. After a while we realized that the best we could do was to sit in a ship that was enabled to observe the outside but incapable of moving itself out of the way of danger, for reasons we did not understand.  
  
Outside, the moon had come out from behind clouds; it cast razor-edged shadows on the ground.  
  


***

  
  
I have seldom found silence to be threatening, or oppressive. When I was a child, I was taken into the mountains to learn meditation, strategy and survival techniques. The three studies coincided in the study of silence, in which one learns to listen not only for what is present but for what is not present.  
  
Silence does not predicate loneliness. Specific emotion-affected times of silence may result in the distractions of fear, longing, or despair, but those are effects of the situation and not of the silence themselves. One receives from silence what one brings to it; if one should bring fear and tension, the primary result is unlikely to be peaceful sleep.  
  
On an unfamiliar planet, I listen for the way the air moves around objects, the sounds of wild creatures' normal movements, the whisper of leaves or grass, the murmur of water, the dry rasp of sand against hard surfaces. When I close my eyes, I let the different sounds build a portrait of my surroundings, a sense of distance from objects, a sense of the sizes and shapes of bodies moving through space, whether small winged creatures in air or larger ones on the ground.  
  
And I wait to find their reactions to my presence.  
  
It is harder to do this while with another person, though not impossible. It requires more concentration, the ability to ignore the known presence in order to focus on the unknown. The one difference is that of listening ever so carefully for any reactions to my companion that might not be reactions to myself, and being ready to respond appropriately to whatever they might be..  
  


***

  
  
"What do you see?" Harper breathed. We had left the ship and stood on the ground, near the saucer, in the shadow of a broken wall that must have stood in its fractured form for centuries. The moonlight flickered behind high-moving clouds, enough so that the outlines of anything that stood on the land could be seen easily. "Anything?"  
  
"Nothing. We might as well be the only ones on the planet. Any idea where we should go from here?"  
  
The night was quiet, cool to me, dry, with a faint breeze moving in the leaves of the small plants and shrubs. The land underfoot was stony, the dirt more sand and broken rock than anything more fertile; in daylight it would probably be colored in shades of red and gold and brown. It felt uncomfortably familiar, and this made me wary until I realized why; this land could easily have fit the description that Barbarossa said his grandfather, Suleimon, had given him of Fountainhead, our long-gone homeworld.  
  
Harper shivered; I gave him a spare shirt I had packed and he slid into it, rolling up the open- ended sleeves.  
  
I scanned the horizon, full circle. Nothing.  
  
We should have kept the Kali Ma, distinctive though it might be; it at least was reliable and known. Of course, it would have been much easier if the original owners, or even the secondary users before us, had retained the repair manuals. Did that species even use repair manuals, or did they simply extrude or grow parts for the ship?  
  
"Hey, wait a minute. I think I've got something." Harper was back inside the ship, pushing aside the weaponry. "Does this look Vedran to you?"  
  
I was beside him in an instant, the hatch closed behind me. "It most certainly does, though I can't imagine what a Vedran would have been doing in a Ttaliani craft."  
  
"I know. Vedrans were supposed to be big. Really big." He scanned the scratched pad anxiously. "I think it says to push the knob on the left. Is that what you read?"  
  
I frowned, not that it would do any good on machinery. "Yes, and whoever's in the other seat should fire the ... air cannon? That can't be right." Why couldn't the saucer be as simple to operate and maintain as a Gauss rifle, or any other reasonable mechanism? Stupid Ttalianis.  
  
"It's worth a try." He was back in his seat, and I in mine a second later. Together we set our hands on the controls -- I could swear he closed his eyes and made a wish -- and we hit the controls simultaneously.  
  
And the saucer came to life in an explosion of sand. It levitated, slowly, as if waking confused from uncertain dreams, then took off almost due west, as I figured it, again skimming above the landscape and leaving the ancient complex of circles far behind.  
  
"I think I'm getting the hang of this. Maybe." Harper glanced at me. I nodded; he had found a better way out of our predicament than I had. Besides, he looked appetizing in my shirt. I wished our situation was more secure, enough so for me to act out with him what I contemplated, but I knew from long experience that giving way to pleasure while on duty, of any sort, was a sure recipe for disaster, so I confined my thoughts of the taste and scent of his skin and the texture of his hair, and the sounds he made during mating behind a mental wall of duty -- and the need for survival. Pleasure could -- and most assuredly would -- come later.  
  
The landscape in which we flew changed, grew more rocky, with deeper fissures in the land. "Are you sure you know what you're doing?" I inquired, after a particularly hazardous swoop in and out of a small canyon.  
  
"Yeah. No. Maybe. Choose one. Hey, I'm doing the best I can!"  
  
"It wasn't a criticism."  
  
"Good thing. Oh, shit. Hold on!"  
  
And the saucer swooped into a narrow, forked canyon, dropped with heart-pounding speed between the red rock walls, settled at the bottom, and turned itself completely, finally, off.  
  
I waited for the reverberations from our near-crash to subside. "Are you injured?"  
  
"I'm fine. You?"  
  
"Never better."  
  
"Good. Good."  
  
"Have you any idea where we are?"  
  
Harper twitched. "I hope not. I don't want to think about where we might be."  
  
"That doesn't sound good."  
  
"Um ... let's say I'm not sure, and if I'm right we're either going to die fast or do really well, but nothing in between."  
  
I gazed at him with exasperation. "Care to explain that a little?"  
  
"I'd draw you a map if I could, but it wouldn't tell you much." He drew a breath, calming himself. "Okay. Let me put it to you metaphorically. Suppose this were Fountainhead, okay? And suppose there were these few last places where your people had hidden, where they couldn't be found unless someone came in on foot, the last secure home for your people. And suppose someone just landed an alien ship in the middle of it, and the two people who come out of the ship look just like two of the kinds of people who drove them into the refuge in the first place?"  
  
"And I thought we were in trouble with Dylan."  
  
"Oh, trust me, having Dylan along right now wouldn't buy us anything even if he were sane." Harper ran both hands through his hair. "This is Canyon De Chelly, the last stronghold of the native people in this land. It's pretty unmistakable from the shape. If we survive the first hour outside the ship, we'll be doing really, really well."  
  
"And you know this because of --"  
  
"The All Systems University Library. Yeah. Before I gave it up, I read everything I could find about Earth history. I was homesick, you know? I just needed some connection."  
  
I put my hand on his arm and felt it grow steady under my touch. "Believe me, I know."  
  


***

  
  
Over the past two years I had taken the opportunity to read everything Andromeda had on the history of my people, and not only from Nietzschian sources. I had read everything I could find that was related to the Kodiak and the Drago-Kazov and the Jaguar from the fall of the Commonwealth forward. I had scrounged for anything I could discover that was related to the slaughter of my family and clan and pride at the hands of the Dragans, and found almost nothing.  
  
All the historians made note of the event; they pointed to it as the fracturing of the last few bonds of alliance among all the prides. None of them went any deeper into the topic, not deeply enough to note the location of the lost casket of Drago Museveni's bones with any reliable sources. I had inferred that for myself, based more on memory than on anything else I had found; that I was right was no compliment to the historians.  
  
Historians write from the viewpoint of the conquerors, or their sycophants. Seldom is history written in the voice of the conquered. The vanquished rebellion is always put down by righteous and noble warriors who wield Might in pursuit of Right, without considering the possibility that those they fought might also have a say in what is right. And, in the case of those vanquished so thoroughly that no one lived to offer an alternate view, all manner of calumny could be heaped upon the heads of the conveniently dead scapegoats.  
  
And so it was with Kodiak Pride, and with the house of Anasazi.  
  
I knew some of what had been written to be true, though biased. Kodiak's people were not doormats but fighters in a war that they had not chosen. They dealt back death to their enemies in the same coin as it was dealt to them, body by body, city by city, until they could attain a measure of security to allow for an armed, negotiated peace. They retained their warrior status among the prides while encouraging those who were better suited to scholarship to pursue knowledge, aware that not all battlefields and battles could be fought with conventional weapons. They did what they had to do to survive, to protect the pride, to keep their children safe and bring them up wise and strong.  
  
And I knew some of what had been written to be outright lies, not worth my time to refute. Losing an ambush is not a fault or an indication of lack of intelligence. Fighting to the death to protect one's family is not villainy. Survival is not an outrage or a crime.  
  
I doubted that history, in any sense, Nietzschian or otherwise, would do well by me. Undoubtedly I would be written as a traitor to my people, as a fool who took up with lesser beings because he was inadequate, "not a true Nietzschian." I would be seen as a compromiser, one who could only restore the name of his pride by making it less than it should have been, impure, less enhanced.  
  
In the end, it didn't matter.  
  
Ultimately, as I skimmed miles of verbiage in search of truth, I spent the most time seeking out not words but pictures, images of the home I had lost. Once, a view of the ancient scraggly pine tree on the hillside, with the undamaged city in the distance behind it, had brought back keen memories of my family's home, and the sounds of their voices and the aromas of the kitchen, so strongly that I could only put my head on my crossed forearms and let the tears come for an hour. It was the first time I had seen a picture of my home since I had left it, perforce, in the cargo hold of a slave ship, and the last thing I had seen before the hold slammed shut was that one stubborn tree, a thousand years old, still clinging to its rocky hillside.  
  
It had been a good thing for my position aboard the Andromeda that I had gone to a former crew member's quarters to view the pictures, on a deck far from where I lived. This was the room in which I had stored whatever belongings of Nietzschians that I could not put in my own quarters or, in good conscience, either store in an anonymous cargo hold or hand over to Beka for sale. For that little space, even aboard an alien ship, I was still within Nietzschian territory, even if it were not of my pride, even if the last Nietzschian who had stood in it had died three centuries earlier. I had that small comfort, as I recovered my control enough to leave the room and go on duty for a long, fortunately boring shift.  
  
I had not called up that image again. I had no need to. It was written into my mind and heart too clearly to require an intermediary.  
  


***

  
  
Four hours before dawn, and we were alone in a desolate area with only our skills at survival to keep us going. I should have felt elated at the opportunity to test myself against this planet, but instead I was worried and uneasy; I knew too little of this land's poisons or hazards, and even if I survived my ignorance any error on my part could still kill Harper.  
  
A blip on the handscreen. "Wait. To the left, behind that ridge. Half a dozen people, perhaps more."  
  
"You're sure they're people and not wildlife?" He leaned against my side, behind my arm, for warmth.  
  
"I'm sure. What do you want to do?" I could imagine several scenarios, few of them good.  
  
"Okay. Are they humans or Nietzschians?"  
  
I rechecked ambient air and body temperature readings, taking the depth of the canyon and the ebbing radiant heat of the walls into account. "Humans. Probably indigenous."  
  
"We go to where they can see us, put down the weapons, and talk to them."  
  
Had he picked up the insanity that Dylan exuded? I sighed. He was right; we were not here for ourselves this time.  
  
"All right." I resolved to drop only the visible weapons, though; there was no reason for the people we met to be aware of just how highly specialized my body armor or clothing could be, or how useful it might become in battle.  
  
We picked our way toward them along the riverbank, between shrubs that Harper couldn't identify, always careful to stay clear of anything that seemed to have spines. Much of the plant life appeared as fortified against attack as I was. Once, when I put a foot down too quickly I heard a sudden rattle and slither; I held still and let the snake move away from me at its own speed. The last thing I needed to do was to accidentally injure or kill an animal that might be a tribal totem or guardian or even deity to the people we were meeting.  
  
They surrounded us, seven men in old faded clothes the color of the land, and stood, waiting for something. Harper said quietly, "I'm going to try something."  
  
"By all means," I murmured back.  
  
He took a step forward. "My name is Seamus Zelazny Harper, from the New Commonwealth cruiser Andromeda Ascendant, and this is my friend and brother, Tyr Anasazi of Kodiak Pride. We are here to help the people of this planet take their home back from the Nietzschian Drago- Kazovs."  
  
One man stepped forward, eyed us thoughtfully, and said something that might have been, "Right. Bring them along," if it had been in a language I'd ever heard before. Since the language was entirely new to me, it could just as easily have meant, "They look tasty; let's have them for supper." I held myself motionless, waiting.  
  
An elderly man walked past the first and stared up into my face. He was shorter than Harper, with deep wrinkles in his face that spoke of decades of living outdoors, but his eyes were piercing even in the darkness. When he spoke, he said, "Ana-sazi."  
  
Harper started to babble something about it being my family name, but I caught his eye and he was quiet. The old man continued to stare at me, as if trying to match me with a description he'd heard years earlier and might have mislaid.  
  
"My family name is Anasazi," I said quietly. "My parents were Victoria and Barbarossa Anasazi of Kodiak Pride; and my great-grandfather was Suleimon Anasazi."  
  
The old man said something, and one of the younger ones nodded and took a step forward to act as interpreter. "You are not from here," he said.  
  
"I have never been here before."  
  
"Your ancestors were not from here."  
  
I thought quickly. How could any Nietzschian say, with certitude, where all his ancestors lived? "As far as I am aware, none of my own ancestors have ever lived on this land while they were on this planet."  
  
The oldest man, the one directly in front of me, put his hand under my wrist, raising my arm; I let him do so. He ran his fingers over the bone spurs on my arm, and I felt a minuscule shiver slide up and down my back. He spoke again. The interpreter said, "You are not one of those who despoil the land?"  
  
"They are my enemies," I said. "They killed my family, my entire people. I owe them only death."  
  
More murmuring took place. The old man stepped away from me, glancing sharply at Harper as he did so, and conferred with his fellows. They all nodded to one another, and turned to walk away. Harper cast a confused glance at me and opened his mouth to speak, but the interpreter turned back toward us.  
  
"I am Hawk Feather. I speak for Tall Bear. Come. We will talk."  
  
We fell into line with them, walking silently along a narrow trail that led across the creek and into the shadow of the walls, away from the narrow strip of moonlight that reached to the canyon floor. Within a short time we reached a series of small roundish buildings; they seemed to have been built of dirt and stone, and were located tight against the rock walls in such a way that they were nearly impossible to see -- even for me -- if one were not seeking them. As we were motioned into one, I noticed that no obvious attempt seemed to be made to keep us there, but that all appeared to hinge upon some traditional form of courtesy. Perhaps if we all minded our manners properly we would get through this alive. I did not let myself think of failure, other than to note how many of them there were, and how they were armed, and estimate how many I could take down, if necessary, before we would be overwhelmed ...  
  
"Harper," I whispered, "do you know the customs of these people?"  
  
"You kidding? I didn't even know anyone was still here."  
  
"Be careful." I only mouthed the words, but he caught them and nodded, politely, to the man at the door as he entered the building.  
  
It was one room, with handwoven woolen carpets on the beaten dirt floor and a fire in the center. The men arranged themselves around the room, sitting near enough to the fire for light but not enough for warmth. I noticed Harper moving a little closer to the fire and sat next to him, so that it would appear that both of us were chilled; I did not want to give the impression that he was weaker, lest they consider this a fault.  
  
One of the younger men, not the interpreter, Hawk Feather, brought out plates with fried dough and meat and handed them to us. This was good; our being offered hospitality in this way meant they were taking us seriously, and at least at this point offering us friendship. After the reaction I'd received near the saucer, I felt relieved. I waited until all the other men had been served food before starting to eat, and I deliberately took the first bite to make sure the food would be safe for him.  
  
It was delicious.  
  
We all ate together in silence until the plates were cleared. Others, outside the building, moved back and forth in the doorway. The men sat quietly, watching us, for a few minutes, until the eldest man started to speak. As he did, I realized that the shadowed area behind him, and behind everyone but us, had filled with people of all ages, women and children, sitting and watching us. All of them wore their dignity so powerfully that it made their ragged clothing insignificant; they could easily have been Nietzschian for their self-possession. Perhaps their ancestors and mine did share genes.  
  
A discussion sprang up, if something slow and thoughtful could be considered to spring, between Tall Bear and three other elders. I did not attempt to follow the words but watched the body language of those who spoke and listened. The speakers' words were deliberate, thoughtful; the listeners appeared to take them calmly and without fear.  
  
Harper, for once, remained still, not moving from his cross-legged position as he watched what was happening around us. His face was pale against the dark walls and the shadowed faces around us, and I noticed as many glances at him as at me; this concerned me. Were they, for some reason, seeing him as more alien and more of a threat than I was? He was not Nietzschian; he could not immediately be identified with those who had enslaved the planet, as I could. Still, I reminded myself, neither Harper nor I knew the history of these people, or the problems they might have had in the past with people who looked like either of us.  
  
And why had they reacted so when Harper said my name?  
  
I had not been mistaken; the whispers around the circle behind me repeated it over and over: Anasazi. Anasazi. Anasazi.  
  
Finally, after the meal had ended and we had politely given back our wooden plates, I decided to speak. I gestured to Hawk Feather, who immediately faced me with an expression of readiness. "Why is my name so important here?"  
  
"You do not know?" His eyebrows rose high.  
  
"No."  
  
He waved a hand toward to the walls, and toward the cliffs behind us. "Anasazi lived here, long ago, long before my people. You are the first Anasazi who has walked here in more than four thousand years." He waited for my reaction; I, for my part, tried to keep my jaw from dropping to the floor. "And you come in peace. This is very important to us, that both you and the belagaana --" he nodded politely toward Harper, "have come to help us."  
  
He nodded toward Harper. "We would hear what you have to say."  
  


***

  
  
Harper spoke first. I kept half an ear on him, but let my mind wander. It had been a long time since I had sat in a darkened room, staring at a fire in the company of others.  
  
Nietzschians are not telepaths; I could wish very easily that we were, if only to be able to know from a distance what might be happening aboard the Andromeda. We did carry small communications devices, but mine seemed to be inactive; undoubtedly this had to do with the Dragans jamming the channels all across the planet.  
  
What was happening up there? Had Ygraine had her child yet, and was she all right? Had Dylan stayed sane enough to command the ship? Were Beka and Trance able to deal with him if he had not? What about Morgan and Paris, on the bridge? And had Andromeda-the-ship enough ability to gauge mental stress states and, if necessary, relieve Dylan of duty if he gave a truly self- destructive command?  
  
I had few if any illusions any more where Dylan Hunt was concerned. What mattered most to me as a Nietzschian was the crucial role he played in the New Commonwealth and in the negotiations with Sabra-Jaguar. He was the linch-pin holding the disparate systems together; if he were to visibly crumble, chaos would ensue again among the many species and civilizations, and the little bit of the Long Night that he had lifted by sheer force of personality would return, more crushing for its having been even temporarily relieved.  
  
Equal to all that, in my own estimation, was his role as a husband and father to his Jaguar wives; should he fail in that alone, his failure could condemn the rest of us along with him in the eyes of other prides who, for the present, were withholding judgment based on his actions in the Battle of Ultima Thule and his willingness to have Kodiak Pride resident upon the Andromeda.  
  
I didn't even want to think about the cost to myself or Harper or to Kodiak if Dylan's marriage to my wives' cousins should fail. Totally aside from the political maneuvers that would ensue, I was the nearest and most likely male for them to turn to; they could not ask Paris for assistance as he was too close in lineage. And, much as I might enjoy spending time with those clever and talented ladies, if it should come to that, I would greatly prefer not to have to do so if Dylan were still alive anywhere in the known worlds. I did not think he would be able to face that sort of defeat with anything less than total fury. He had not been raised in a culture where the woman's choice was the only choice, and he would not accept any shift from himself to me in their attentions. If there had been a god available, I would not only have implored him to maintain Dylan's sanity and marital bliss but would also have blessed him several times over for putting me in my own marriage, the only sane place for me in this lunatic universe. And, since it also contained Harper, the place where all of my dearest could be together without difficulty --  
  
The room had stilled and everyone appeared to be looking at me. I glanced at Harper.  
  
"The elders wanted to know if there was anything you could add to what I said," Harper said quietly, but one eyebrow lifted interrogatively.  
  
"Please tell them I apologize for my thoughts going astray; I was worrying a bit about Ygraine."  
  
Harper nodded and turned to the interpreter. "He is concerned about his wife, who is expecting a child."  
  
The ripple of sympathetic "ah's" that circled the room made me relax a little. Perhaps things might go more easily, now that they knew I had a family.  
  
"You are weary; rest. We will talk more when you awaken," the interpreter said. "Come, we will take you to a place where you can sleep." Behind us, the women started to spread out handwoven blankets and rugs.  
  
We stepped out into the night again, and I glanced up automatically, looking for the Andromeda.  
  
"You won't be able to see it," Harper said quietly.  
  
"Probably not. No, there it is." I pointed at a particularly stable-looking object overhead, shining in the sky just above the edge of the canyon. I could see enough of the shape to know what I was watching. "Next to the moon."  
  
"That is your ship?" The interpreter gestured, and someone brought out an archaic brass telescope and set it up quickly. "Be sure, now." I looked through the eyepiece; yes, it was the Andromeda. I felt a rush of emotion. Was this the first time I had been able to look at the ship from away, and think of it as home because my family was there?  
  
"Yes. This is the Andromeda Ascendant, the flagship of the New Commonwealth," I told him. "Harper can tell you more if you wish."  
  
The old men peered through the telescope in turn, and murmured to one another. After a few minutes an older woman came to us, and tapped Harper on the arm. She gestured to us to follow her, and we went with her, following the light of her small lantern along a narrow path that wound up the side of the canyon until we reached a wall with an open doorway. Beyond the door, a small fire had been built in the center of the room, and blankets had been laid around it. A jar of water stood nearby. The room had an open, square window that in daylight must have had a good view of that section of the canyon.  
  
I sat on one of the woolen rugs, a gray one with an abstract pattern of mountains. The blanket folded on it was soft and would keep out the chill wonderfully. "Nice."  
  
"Yeah. I've lived in a lot worse places than this." Harper sat next to me. "I don't know what these people taboos are, but I have a feeling I should sleep over there."  
  
"Will you be warm enough?" I asked quietly.  
  
"Oh, yeah. I've got two blankets. No problem." He hesitated. "Do you think one of us should stay on watch?"  
  
I considered. We were the guests of these people, who apparently held to ancient customs of guest friendship. "I'll keep an ear open. You sleep; you're the chief negotiator here as it is."  
  
"You sleep, too," he said. "Don't worry."  
  
"I'd feel a good deal more secure if I could talk to someone aboard the ship."  
  
"I know. It'll happen. We'll be all right."  
  
He kissed me once, and went to lie on his rug next to the fire, a blanket pulled over him. The night air was cool, but not cold; I gave him my blanket as well and saw him smile as I laid it over him.. I added two more hardwood logs that would burn slowly and made sure they were catching fire before I lay on my own rug and closed my eyes. The last thing I saw, out the window, was the small silver curve of the ship, so impossibly out of reach yet present.  
  


***

  
  
I knew nothing of the Anasazi who lived here long ago. I could hypothesize, from the building I lay in, that they were good builders, careful and capable craftsmen to assemble these stone blocks as they did, to last so long in the shelter of the high cliffs. I could assume that they built this high into the wall of the canyon for safety in case of invasion, as well as to be out of the way of the river at flood time.  
  
But there was no way that I could know for sure. This planet, the place of my ancestors, was as alien to me as I was to it. I could hear the wind whispering the secrets of the ages, but they were not for my ears.  
  
And what did the people we had met see when they looked at me? Someone whose ancestors took the name of their vanished predecessors, but who has no other link to this place? Or someone from their own past, now returning?  
  
These people, the Anasazi who built this square room in which I lie with Harper near a small fire, were smaller than I was. They were probably closer to Harper's size, based on the dimensions of the room. If I were to have to live here long I would develop permanent cramps in too many muscles, though I am only a little above average size for a Nietzschian, regardless of what Charlemagne might think.  
  
Most of my life, I have had no home beyond the end of a job, a season, a contract. I remember the country of my childhood, but I cannot imagine living there now, as a man. What would it be to live in this canyon always, to hunt in the trees and farm in the greensward by the river, to know that I lived where my ancestors lived, and that my children would live in this beautiful land? It would mean giving up much that I rely upon, but the image tempted me; if I were without the responsibilities of family and pride that I have, I would have liked to try it. As it is, that would only be a pseudolife, a vacation from reality. My life is with Kodiak Pride, and Harper, and I have no home where they are not.  
  


***

  
  
In the morning Hawk Feather met us at the door. "We have food for you at the bottom of the trail."  
  
"The bottom of the -- whoa, Nelly! I walked up this last night? In the dark?" Harper grabbed at a stone protruding from the rock wall; fortunately, it held.  
  
"You climb greater distances all the time, in the ship," I reminded him. The train was certainly narrow and rocky, the path well-worn.  
  
"That's inside, and I know where all the handholds are. And yeah, I surf some major water, but that's water. If I fall it's not going to bonk me on the head." Harper grinned at me and at the interpreter. "Just a bit surprised, I guess."  
  
Hawk Feather nodded. "After the meal, the elders wish to speak with you again."  
  
Food before negotiations; this was the formal mode indeed. I nodded in return, and we walked down the trail to the round house where we'd come the night before, staying close behind Harper in case he slipped. We arrived at the lower level without incident. This morning, everyone sat outside, around a firepit, watching the movement of birds over the river. I asked Harper if he knew what kind of birds they were, but he shook his head. We ate porridge made from a grain I thought resembled corn, and laced with the last few scraps of yesterday's mutton. When the bowls were put aside, the interpreter took his place and Tall Bear started to speak. I watched his face as Hawk Feather translated, as one does when formality is in order.  
  
"We have seen the ship in the sky, and we agree that it is not from the Dragans. We will help you in whatever way we may, but there are limits to what we offer: we will not risk our homes again." Hawk Feather looked at the fire, but Tall Bear's eyes were on mine. "They are all we have left."  
  
I nodded. "Have your men looked inside the small ship we came in?"  
  
Tall Bear consulted the man next to him, then shook his head. "We could not get it open."  
  
"We found firearms and explosives in a cave where we found the saucer; they are for you or whoever will use them against the Dragans." I glanced at Harper, who nodded. "Do you have a way to put us in contact with others who will fight also?" I swallowed hard. "I know what it is to lose one's home; I have been homeless, in that way, for many years. The Dragans destroyed my home; I do not want them to do the same to yours. It is so ... peaceful here."  
  
Tall Bear smiled slowly, and not entirely pleasantly. "We are quiet people, but we have not forgotten the ways of our ancestors." He spoke in his own language and several men rose. "Will you go with them to the saucer to bring back the weapons?"  
  
"I'll go," Harper said. "You stay here and strategize."  
  
"Be careful."  
  
"Yeah, yeah." He grinned at me and went off through the canyon with the local men, who seemed amused by him and friendly. Of course I would worry, but less so when he was with these men than if he were to go alone. Harper's ability to hide in plain sight was excellent in an urban environment; however, within open country he might be less effective.  
  
I turned back to Tall Bear. "What can you offer to do that will not endanger your families?"  
  
Hawk Feather smiled slowly, as did the men around him. A boy, behind him, carried a small backpack into the center of the circle and set it down in front of me. I opened the flap, and found a primitive mechanism, with a hand crank. I had only seen its like in historic photos, but as a child I had tried to build a communicator with much the same principles.  
  
"Radio?" I murmured.  
  
Tall Bear nodded. "When the beasts who eat men came --"  
  
"The Magog."  
  
"Yes. We used these to contact other tribes, other nations, to let them know what we needed and what we could do. We hid. We survived. Others also hid, and survived when the cities died." It could have been the light, but the lines in Tall Bear's face seemed to deepen. "Then the Dragans came, fighting the beasts, and took over what was left, and we hid again, but we have maintained these, and kept speaking our own language. We can still talk to each other in ways they will not understand."  
  
"How many can you call on this, these days?" They must have had another signal to let people know when they were going to call; without a constant source of power, other than the crank, there would be no way to know when a call was coming.  
  
Hawk Feather shrugged. "We call. We see who answers. The message is passed."  
  
"And the Dragans will not hear you?"  
  
"They will not hear. It is an old frequency; by the time they notice it has been used, we will be done; the people we speak with will use a slightly different one to pass it on."  
  
Ah. Despite hundreds of years of Dragan domination, they had managed to maintain a communications network under their rulers' very noses by resolutely maintaining an effective lower level of technology than the Nietzschian culture would expect. I was impressed, and said so.  
  
The men around the circle nodded. "Oh, we like modern weapons very well, as long as they work," Tall Bear said. "Just because we keep the old ways doesn't mean we won't adapt when it works better."  
  
I smiled back. "Excellent." If they thought the ancient equipment they had was 'modern' they'd probably be thrilled with the guns.  
  


***

  
  
I knew it would take a while for Harper and the men to return, even if things went perfectly, so I made myself useful around the village. I helped one of the younger men carry a log that would replace a rotted piece of wood in his house, and I listened as several of the men, and two or three young women like Amazons, talked about their experiences in fighting the outsiders, which was what they called the Dragans. Somewhere in the conversation, one of them asked me, "How is it that you and he are together?"  
  
I had learned, by then, that 'belagaana,' the word they'd used for him, meant outsider but not in a pejorative sense. I was probably also a belagaana, but they were polite and would not call me that to my face. So I said, "We fought together, against the Magog."  
  
Work stopped, all around me. "You fought together -- and lived," said the man whose log I'd helped carry.  
  
I nodded.  
  
"How?" one of the Amazons asked. "Everyone who fights the beasts dies. Everyone."  
  
There was no way out of this other than through it. "My ship has excellent medical facilities. We developed an antibody, a serum that when injected into a person will kill the Magog larvae. If someone has survived being attacked, and is given the serum, he will not become food for the beasts. He will live."  
  
There were more looks back and forth. "The elders will not say this, but we will. After the last attack of the beasts, we had to ... "  
  
"You do not need to say it," I told him. "Is there anything in your religion or way of life that would prevent all of you being given the serum?"  
  
They looked at me as if I were crazy. "Nothing keeps us from doing whatever we need to do to survive."  
  
"Then, if it is at all possible, I will make sure you are given it. I will need to contact the ship, to let them know to make up enough of it, but we will make certain you're protected."  
  
"Are they coming again soon?" This, from a boy just in his teens, but his elders did not seem to think he had spoken out of turn.  
  
"They should not be here again for a long time, if ever."  
  
The elders overheard this. Before I knew it, I was in the middle of a circle of the entire population of the village, telling them about the Magog worldship, its attack upon the Andromeda, and Harper's destruction of it with the Kali Ma.  
  
When I finished, no one spoke.  
  
"We know that you wish us to help you," Hawk Feather said slowly, "and we believe that you are honest. But can you prove what you say?"  
  
"I have the scar to prove it." I would never have expected I'd have to show that one scar, to prove my word was good, but I was glad I'd decided to keep it and not allow Trance to heal me completely, Nietzschian perfection to the contrary. 'Perfection' did not mean an absence of experience, or the automatic erasure of its tracks upon the body, as long as they did not inhibit ability.  
  
I eased down the side of my trousers, to show the scar on my hip from tooth and claw. It had healed well, uninfected, but its source was obvious from its size and shape. Harper had traced it with his fingertips so often that it no longer reminded me so much of pain but of him. Showing the scar, in this situation, did not bother me, though it was not something I would normally have done outside a challenge within pride. If a few centimeters of marred skin would gain us allies, I'd show it.  
  
The scar was brighter than I'd expected, redder. They came close enough to look, but not to touch. One old woman, who had not spoken before, disappeared and returned with a small pottery jar stopped with a chunk of carved wood. She said something I didn't understand, handed me the jar, and waited. I thanked her; I didn't have to know the words. I opened the jar and smeared a little of her preparation -- which smelled interestingly herbal -- on the scar. She smiled at me, with very few teeth, and said something else, which made the interpreter blush.  
  
I raised an eyebrow at him. "Should I ask?"  
  
"She said it will heal anything, from bad childbirth scars to bear attacks."  
  
"You still have bear? Not just people named for bears?" This startled me more than I'd expected.  
  
"Occasionally. They have returned in the mountains, but they seldom reach this canyon."  
  
It hadn't occurred to me how easily large predators would return to the land once it had been ravaged by Magog. Then again, the largest predators present weren't interested in fighting bears; the Dragans were too busy working with the Magog against Dylan. Given the choice, I would prefer to deal with bears. I said something like this, and everyone nodded thoughtfully, with glances at Tall Bear.  
  
"You would not wish to fight Tall Bear, even now," Hawk Feather said. "He knows more about tactics than any of us."  
  
I shook my head a little and smiled. "It's always good to have smart men on your side."  
  
This was something everyone could agree with.  
  


***

  
  
Harper and the others returned, burdened with armaments; it was clear that Harper had already given them a fast lesson in their use, one I could tell was largely unnecessary. I was just refastening my clothes; he gave me an inquiring look, but I shook my head slightly, and he nodded, understanding that whatever had occurred in his absence was not a problem.  
  
"I managed to get through the interference and contact Rommie," he told me. "Dylan's pissed; Xenophon's stonewalling. Beka said if we need reinforcements she'll send down Morgan and Boudicca in a speeder. And, before you ask, Ygraine hasn't gone into labor yet."  
  
"Why not? She's more than due."  
  
"She says she's holding off until we can be there."  
  
I snorted, the only reasonable way I could find to express my sentiments.  
  
"Yeah. I told her to get on with it, too, but she said she wasn't ready yet."  
  
"Children will be born when they want to be, or so I've noticed in the past," I said. "By the way, when you speak with Trance, ask her to make sure there's a good supply of anti-Magog serum for the people here."  
  
"Already done." He grinned. "I knew you'd get to that sooner or later. It's too good a bargaining chip to leave."  
  
"These people get it first."  
  
"Ah. That's why you had your pants down." He'd spoken in an undertone, but the lilt in his voice was obvious.  
  
"Only for you."  
  
"And Boudicca, and Ygraine, and Morgan ... am I leaving anyone out?"  
  
"Undoubtedly. Have you anything you want to add to what will go in the transmission? They're going to send it out tonight, at sunset."  
  
"How will people know to listen in?"  
  
"They already sent out messenger birds."  
  
"They still use carrier pigeons? Cool. And the skip will be in at sunset; that'll help, too."  
  
"Anything I can do?"  
  
"Tell me that jar has lube in it."  
  
"I think not. It's some sort of homemade salve, and whatever is in it makes it strong enough that I can feel it working. Not something I'd particularly want to have applied to intimate places."  
  
"It might be good for them, you know, useful for everything from childbirth to snakebite."  
  
"Bear attacks, actually."  
  
"Oh, I really didn't want to know that. Wait a minute, what did you put it on?"  
  
"The Magog scar."  
  
"Oh, okay."  
  


***

  
  
Harper had done well. Once at the saucer site, he'd taught a couple of the local men how to operate the craft, and they'd agreed to take us back to the Kali Ma at night; they also planned to explore the saucer cavern more extensively than I had, and to store food and water there, just in case. If it were found suitable, it would become a place of refuge.  
  
I couldn't help thinking that we were running behind on a schedule I could feel in my mind, though this land had no clocks other than the shape of a shadow on the ground.  
  
Near sunset, we went with a small group to a sheltered cave high up on the wall, near the edge of the canyon, and waited while they cranked the transmission box and spoke quickly, in a language of complex sounds and syllables. The message was sent, and acknowledgment received, within a minute; a return message in a handful of words came precisely an hour later: we were asked to go to another hidden settlement, in another sparsely settled area on the other side of the planet. It was a good thing we were going back for the Kali Ma; I would not have wanted to trust the short- range saucers over that expanse of ocean. I should not have had to think of them as short-range; their creators had flown them here from two galaxies away. However, they had been without maintenance for so long that I would not have trusted any of them outside the atmosphere.  
  
I still felt wary of alerting the Dragans to our presence, but if our friends could knock out their communications or block their interference of ours -- as they had promised in their messages -- we could work with Andromeda to get past their defenses. And, once inside headquarters, I could deal with Xenophon.  
  
We reached the saucer, and flew in it under a clouded sky to where we had left the Kali Ma. Harper took a little while to make sure the other saucers worked, and to turn over the one we'd used to the locals, while I searched the caves again, to make sure I had missed nothing before. The men who came with us found more than I did: messages carefully carved and drawn on the rock in hidden places, probably during the Magog years, to tell where other caches of weapons were stored. I could not read the pictograms, but the men were cautiously pleased, as it appeared that several caches might have been stored in places they already knew but had not visited in many years.  
  
They scattered, in the saucers, flying low over what Harper said was sagebrush, and we climbed into the Kali Ma together, and set course for the next settlement, running without lights and cloaked. For this trip we could not keep as low to the planet as the saucers had -- the waves rolled higher than the cactus had stretched.  
  
"I can't believe it." Harper muttered.  
  
"What?"  
  
"Look at those curlers, and me without my surfboard!"  
  
"Another time." I turned his chin and kissed him. "And later."  
  
"Yeah. Definitely."  
  
"Were you warm enough last night?"  
  
"Well, yeah, but that's not the point, is it?"  
  
I stared at the trackless water. "This is taking too long, isn't it?"  
  
"Way too long. We should have heard from Dylan by now." He flipped the switch that sent a coded pulse to Andromeda. "I'm not getting a ping here."  
  
"Other side of the planet?"  
  
"Possibly."  
  
"Shouldn't we be able to tell?"  
  
"Are all Nietzschians this picky? Wait, there she is, just coming around the other side of the moon. Xenophon must've decided to throw something at the ship again."  
  
"And Dylan's giving it right back to him." It felt so odd, watching a battle between the ship and the planet we were on, but at least it gave me a sense of where we'd have to go to find the Dragan headquarters.  
  
"We could go directly there, you know," Harper murmured.  
  
I shook my head. "We'd be too much of a target, now that they're looking around. Wait. Besides, we should follow through with what we've arranged."  
  
"When did you become Mr. Diplomatic?"  
  
I sighed. "Technically, when Boudicca chose me." I cocked an eyebrow at him. "One of us had to be."  
  
"Who did all the negotiating with the Dineh in Canyon de Chelly?"  
  
"It was your turn."  
  
"And when will it be your turn?"  
  
When I'm facing Xenophon. "I'll let you know."  
  


***

  
  
Everything I say is true.  
  
Everything I say is always true. Lying in one's words is unworthy of a Nietzschian.  
  
If my words do not match my actions, let my actions speak for me. Let my actions proclaim who I am, what I am.  
  


***

  
  
We saw our first landing site from far enough away to determine it was ... gone. Freshly gone. It had been attacked within the last day; the smoke of the bombs still hung in the air over the ruined village. Its remote location had not kept it safe.  
  
"Scanning for survivors," Harper said, as his fingers worked the board. He shook his head. "But we've got company. And no good weapons."  
  
A Nietzschian scout ship was approaching quickly, racing toward us from the one place our sensors were blinded by the sun.  
  
"Why didn't you tell me before?" I threw the ship's frail weaponry into attack mode. "You should have kept some of the weapons you used against the Magog homeworld."  
  
"We used all of them, and I didn't have time to make that many more. Besides, this is my planet; I don't want to blow it away. I want to free it!"  
  
The scout ship fired a warning shot across the bow.  
  
"Can Dylan see what's happening? He should be helping us!" Harper pressed the controls again. "Oh, shit, he's on the other side of the planet again."  
  
"You'd think that with a ship that size and speed he could actually be here in time, but no." I could not help growling.  
  
The scout ship threw a bungee net at us; it tangled around the Kali Ma's struts and held. We could feel the strain.  
  
"All right, anti-bungee technology in the next upgrade, I promise." Harper looked frantic. "Tyr. I want you to promise me you won't leave me there alone."  
  
I grasped his shoulders. "You are my shieldbrother, Harper, and the co-father of my children. I will not abandon you." I pulled him close for one passionate kiss. "But I know these Dragans. I must ask you to trust me, no matter what it looks like."  
  
Cautious comprehension flashed across his face. "I told you before, I love you."  
  
He had said it when we fought the Magog. Would he still love me after I had done what I would do here, what I must do here?  
  
I held his eyes with my own. "You, and my wives, before all others. Kodiak, before all outsiders. The Andromeda, before the Commonwealth and the universes."  
  
"What are you going to do?"  
  
"Kill Xenophon."  
  
It seemed an hour passed while this thought struck Harper. "I'll help you."  
  
"No. You can't help." I shook him as gently as I could, considering every muscle and nerve was alert. I felt as if the bungees on the ship were straining at my own body, pulling it into an unwanted dock and an uncontrollable future. "I need you to stay alive. I don't care what you do. You must live. Do you understand me?"  
  
"We'll argue it later." Harper slipped his smallest, most powerful welder into a pocket; it looked like a trinket but could cut through the Andromeda's hull as if it were butter. He'd used it to shape replacement plates for the ship after the Magog attack. "I trust you to be Tyr Anasazi out of Victoria by Barbarossa."  
  
I slid a data disk into a hidden pouch in the gauntlet on my right arm. "I trust you to be Seamus Zelazny Harper of Earth and Eureka Maru."  
  
"Hey, that says it all, doesn't it?" The jolt as we struck solid ground shook us both. "Welcome to the future. Wait a minute." He flat-palmed a panel, which read the print; he grasped my wrist and I did the same. We slid our fingers on the controls in unison. "Secure."  
  
There was no time to say anything more.  
  


***

  
  
When humans and Nietzschians meet on Dragan-held territory, only one result can be predicted with certainty: not all will leave there alive.  
  
Harper took down six in the hatchway and wounded several others before they pinned him down. I kept a rein on my emotions only enough to restrain myself from going into what Beka called 'berserker mode', and took out a dozen more before I was stunned and captured.  
  
Apparently our lives had information value, for those who put us there had orders to inflict pain but not permanent damage. Harper's stamina under abuse surprised the guards, though not me; he thought on his feet, even while screaming. His eyes met mine as he went unconscious, and I knew I would have to divert them to save his life. I spat into the face of my torturer, and he returned the favor with interest and a whip. When we were thrown together into a dank and comfortless cell, to lie manacled on the lumpy stone floor, it was a relief.  
  
Even on so small a planet, travel takes time. I tried to estimate our distance from the headquarters from which Xenophon had spoken to Andromeda, and figured we had at best a few hours of life remaining to us. Harper would survive, if he were not harmed further; only the Andromeda could be trusted to heal him completely. I had to draw their attention and hope they would realize I was the greater prize.  
  
As I considered this, I recalled one night when we lay together in my bed, and he had asked me, quietly, if I regretted anything I had ever done. I said I had not, but I would have liked to do some things differently although the ultimate result would probably not have changed.  
  
"Yeah. I know what you mean. I couldn't not fight the Dragans -- you know what that's like -- but sometimes I should've been smarter about how I did it." Harper had shaken his head, the wispy ends of his hair tickling my shoulder. "They ever catch me again, they're going to get really inventive in dealing with me, and that kind of creative thinking I can do without."  
  
The sound of the door grating on its badly kept hinges drew me back to the present. I could not let Harper be harmed more if I could help it. I had to hope that the Andromeda had seen us, or heard us, and been too busy momentarily to respond. I had to distract our captors from him.  
  
I had to believe that Dylan would come, or send help in whatever measure he could manage. I had to believe it even as I prepared for what would come if he did not.  
  
Two Dragan guards strode in, followed by Xenophon DeGaulle himself.  
  


***

  
  
When I was a boy, enslaved in the diamond mines after my pride's demise, I dreamed of the day I would face the man who had overseen the slaughter. I dreamed of dealing unto him what he had dealt unto my family, my friends, my kin. As I grew older, the dreams changed, so that I wished to find him unarmed on the other end of my Gauss rifle. I wanted to know not that he had died on a planet whose sun had gone nova but unpleasantly, suffering for a long time, and that his death was reliably witnessed and confirmed, so that I would no longer dream of the slaughter.  
  
Things seldom turn out as we wish when we are children.  
  


***

  
  
I gave him no satisfaction in my expression, though the manacles were tight. "Xenophon DeGaulle, I presume. I must compliment you on your hospitality."  
  
He stared at me, one eyebrow rising, one foot tapping thoughtfully. "I find your presence here intriguing, Kodiak. What purpose could you possibly have in common with these kludges?" The tapping foot nudged Harper.  
  
I restrained myself from pushing to my feet and kicking him to death, and then restrained the appearance of that effort. "Would you believe me if I said it was benevolent?"  
  
"No, nor would I believe anything else you would say." His foot returned to tapping. "You are an inconvenience, at minimum, and, beyond that, somewhat hard to believe." He strolled the room, circling me, observing me. "We have met, before, have we not?"  
  
"It seems I remember you far more clearly than you remember me."  
  
He stood still, and amazement crossed his face. I could only take that as a compliment, however he intended it. "And I thought you were dead. My mistake."  
  
"One of them, at least." I struggled up onto my elbows, fully aware of the guards' weapons aimed at us on the floor. "Should I ask why you thought me dead?"  
  
"I was told so, several times. Obviously my informants were incorrect."  
  
"Only 'several' times? How careless of you."  
  
Xenophon shrugged. "It makes no difference now. You will be dead enough soon, as will the kludge."  
  
"On what charges?" I managed a small smile. " I'm curious what version of law you use these days."  
  
"Does it matter?" He pursed his lips. "We could start with inciting civil misconduct, resisting arrest, assault on my men. For him, the charges start with espionage and treason."  
  
"Treason?" I let myself appear astonished. "You're accusing my kludge of treason? On what grounds?"  
  
Forgive me, Harper.  
  
"You didn't know his birthplace was this planet? His previous owners must have lied about him when they sold him to you." Xenophon tutted, apparently considering such prevarication among slave dealers a violation of common courtesy. "Not that it matters, since all the charges are provable and result in the death penalty. I will, however, delay his death until after yours, simply because I may get more out of him when he sees what will happen to you." He waved to his guards. "String him up."  
  
"Torture is no mark of honor for a Nietzschian," I snarled at him.  
  
"Different times, different customs," he said. "However, it does give you a chance to show me whether you really are the man your father was." He waited until the guards had removed my gauntlets before adding, "Or your mother."  
  
I growled, but I allowed them to do what they willed, since it took attention away from Harper. Had he not been there, I would have disemboweled the guards with my spikes and torn Xenophon's throat out with my bare hands; instead, I played the waiting game.  
  
"There is honor in withstanding pain, is there not? You will show me your honor, slave boy."  
  
They had taken my mailshirt while we were unconscious. Now they looped slotted gauntlets around my forearms, pulling unmercifully on the tender skin at the base of each spine, pushing them out of alignment. The gauntlets were strung overhead on pulleys, and could be made as tight as they wished, until they shredded my arms. Spines will regrow completely only if the base bone is undamaged; if they crippled me, and I lived, I would bear the scars forever. As I stood, I could hold my arms so they would be undamaged. I knew this would not last.  
  
"I am Tyr Anasazi, the Kodiak, out of Victoria by Barbarossa, and no man's slave, not even yours!" I roared at him.  
  
One of the guards handed Xenophon a long-handled tool like Harper's welder. "We will see about that." He touched the tip of the tool to the base of a spine on my left arm, and lightning shot through me.  
  
For Nietzschians, some pain can be transmuted to pleasure. This was not that kind of pain.  
  
I regained consciousness through the agony in my arms, more intense than Magog bites. I kept my footing, with difficulty. I shook my hair back from my face, the better to glare at him.  
  
"Just as a matter of curiosity," I said, though my voice creaked with effort, "when did you come to this planet?"  
  
Xenophon waved his torturer aside and observed me as if I were a curious but harmless trinket, of whose purpose he was unsure. "Nine years ago, more or less. What possible significance can that have to you?"  
  
"I am a student of history, as are all of us, are we not?" I regarded him as steadily as possible. "I prefer to know who I am fighting."  
  
"Even when you have already lost?" Xenophon's mobile eyebrow rose again, and he shrugged. "I have nothing to hide." He caught the guard's eye. "But let me see to your continuing entertainment, lest you be bored by my recitation."  
  
The guard unfastened a short-tailed whip from his belt. I could see the small metallic spikes it bore, hooked like rose thorns and as painful.  
  
"Shall we compare notes, then, on the inefficiency of your assassins?"  
  
"Later, perhaps."  
  
The whip fell on my shoulders, on my back, heavily enough to mark, to allow the metal thorns to catch and pull. I listened as Xenophon recited, drily, the history of his conquests. I marked them in my mind. My homeworld had not been the first. Before that had come Lyrica, a world that had been known in Commonwealth times as a paradise and the center of musical study; I had flown past its still-smoking cinder more than once. Since then, he had learned to ravage without inflicting total destruction, and the list of worlds was long and appalling. I committed it to memory; Dylan would want to know.  
  
The whip fell. I could feel my blood flowing down my back, trickling down my legs.  
  
Dylan would come. Dylan always came. Even when he mistrusted me, even when he disliked what I did, Dylan always came through for the people of his crew.  
  
Harper would endure, I knew. He had fire in him. I had seen him face his worst nightmares unarmed, with the sure knowledge of death, and tell me that maybe they weren't so fierce and we could take them on together, hand to hand, and I had known from that moment that I loved him.  
  
My eyelids drooped slightly; the whip fell faster, and I opened my eyes to see Harper's eyes open, watching, frozen in fear. He was starting to panic, his mouth beginning to move ...  
  
"Boy," I said, "mind your manners and keep a civil tongue in your mouth while your betters are conversing."  
  
Harper's eyes narrowed slightly. Someone who did not know him would think he was cringing, and he was, but that was only a cover. He was alert and thinking fast.  
  
Since that day when we fought for our lives against Magog, I had never again called him a boy to his face. He was a survivor. He would adapt.  
  
Harper scanned the floor within reach, surreptitiously, and pushed himself away from the guards until his back was to the wall. He knew they wouldn't stop him; there was nowhere to go.  
  
"I see you keep your kludge well in line. You are to be commended for continuing to do so even in this situation." Xenophon continued to circle me as if he thought I were the latest statue in the sculpture garden.  
  
Was that a noise in the outer room? Yes. Two rooms away and advancing quickly.  
  
Xenophon continued, ignoring it. "Of course he'll die soon, but perhaps he'll be useful before then."  
  
I slid a glance at Harper again. "You hear me, boy?"  
  
Do you hear them also?  
  
He nodded slowly, and skated his eyes toward Xenophon as he dropped his fingers slowly. They had erred in cuffing him in front, but that was typical Dragan arrogance. He opened his hand just enough to show a small metal chip in it.  
  
Xenophon turned his back on Harper and returned to recounting his destructive travels, glancing at me to make sure I understood just what a brilliant tactician he was. Harper curled up, head to knees, clasped hands by his face. His fingers counted down: three, two, one.  
  
A brain-shattering shriek from hell split the air, and went on and on. Xenophon collapsed, as did his guards. Only the pain shooting from my wrists to my shoulders kept me from doing the same.  
  
The door crashed in with a burst of weapons-fire in the room beyond, and Dylan Hunt charged through it followed by Beka, and the combined strength of Andromeda's Kodiak-Jaguar Pride  
  
Harper took the small chip away from his data port and the sound stopped. His smile, through bruises, was glorious as Beka unlocked his shackles and helped him up. He wrapped his arms around her, and she hugged him back as she steadied him on his feet.  
  
Two shots, and I turned my head to see Dylan, lip curled with distaste, turning away from the dead guards to confront their master. He aimed carefully at Xenophon, who sprawled on the floor at his feet.  
  
I have seen Xenophon's expression once before, in one of Harper's old vids. A comedian had gotten into bed with a supposedly stuffed bear, only to have his partner, hiding on the other side of the bed, throw the bear's forearm around him in a hug. According to Harper the man was still running.  
  
"Don't shoot," I said. Dylan narrowed his eyes and said nothing. His aim never faltered.  
  
Paris and Morgan released the tension on my arms and let me down. Harper pushed in to help bear my weight, for my legs would not hold me steady.  
  
"Your timing was excellent," I told them. "The entertainment here is boring."  
  
Beka raised an eyebrow toward me. She, too, had a force lance aimed at Xenophon, but looked as if she'd rather beat him with it than shoot him, for the sheer pleasure of it. "I'm delighted to hear that, Tyr. You know I prefer an interesting life."  
  
A slender, pale figure came through the door behind Dylan. "Well, well, brother. I see we have a friend in common." Charlemagne assessed me. "You'd better get him to your med deck; he'll need it. As for that ..." Charlemagne's lip curled as he surveyed Xenophon. "How does it feel to know your army has fled to avoid slaughter by your slaves? Your day is done, Dragan. Over. Finito. Kaput. Any last requests?"  
  
"He deserves none." I growled, and straightened, despising the weakness of my legs, forcing myself through the pain until I stood tall. "I have an execution to perform." I took two steps, slowly, ignoring the sensation of the blood oozing from the cuts. "Xenophon DeGaulle, I charge you with the murder of Victoria and Barbarossa Anasazi, my parents, and their children, my brothers and sisters, and with the genocide of Kodiak Pride. The penalty is death." I reached for Dylan's force lance.  
  
Boudicca moved swiftly in front of me and rested her hand softly on my chest over my heart. Her voice throbbed low. "As matriarch of Kodiak Pride, I claim the right of the old ways. Will you grant it to me, alpha?"  
  
Confused furrows creased Dylan's forehead, but his eyes remained on Xenophon. Beka looked from him to us and back, and then at Charlemagne, who stood nearby.  
  
Charlemagne shook his head slightly; it wasn't his decision to make. "I did say we kept to our old traditions, didn't I?"  
  
I drew a painful breath. She had the right, undeniably, on behalf of my mother and my sisters and my cousins, for all of us. "Who claims this right with you?"  
  
"I do." Morgan stepped forward. Blood, probably from the guards outside, had splashed on her legs and on the hand that held the force lance.  
  
"We claim the right on behalf of Jaguar Pride." Karla and Nerissa came forward. "Xenophon DeGaulle buried our cousins alive on Chita Drift, and slaughtered Attila Station, home to ten thousand Jaguars."  
  
"Attila Station was a pesthole. It needed cleaning." Xenophon was recovering his bravado.  
  
"Save your breath for your cries of anguish," Nerissa said. Her voice chilled even me. "Attilla held the medical school for Jaguars from a hundred worlds, and the records of our ancestry for a hundred generations." She gazed steadily from one of us to another until we all let the words sink in. "Yes. We had copies of Paul Museveni's records of how we were created, of what peoples of this planet gave rise to us -- until Xenophon came along."  
  
"Jaguar Pride? Kodiak Pride?" Xenophon snarled. "A passel of weaklings living in dreams. They're better off dead."  
  
Morgan's eyes flicked like the light on the edge of the knife in her belt. "Do you grant it, Tyr Anasazi out of Victoria by Barbarossa?"  
  
"Yes." I said. "I grant it."  
  
Dylan said nothing. His eyes rested on me and I saw comprehension dawn in his face, followed by steel. "Since this is a matter of Nietzschian inter-pride affairs, and since we have already dealt with the outlaws we pursued here, I surrender the prisoner to traditional justice. Xenophon DeGaulle, you have ravaged the systems long enough. This planet, and the rest of the universe, will be far better off without you." He holstered his force lance, and came to walk with me as I left the room.  
  
"But --" Beka said.  
  
"No," Paris told her. "Tyr and Harper need medical help now."  
  
We moved through the room and reached the corridor before I felt myself start to collapse. Dylan slid his shoulder under my armpit on one side, and Paris did the same on the other. I could only lay my ravaged arms on their shoulders and let them support me.  
  
"Come on, brother, my cousin Anjali and Trance Gemini are waiting for you." Charlemagne braced the door for us.  
  
"I may not have come into this torture chamber on my feet, but I will leave that way," I told him.  
  
"I never expected otherwise." He nodded to me as I passed. "Oh, by the way, you might tell me, while we're at it, how you two managed to engineer an alliance among the vast majority of humans on this planet in less than three days."  
  
I shook my head, a smile coming unbidden to my lips as I thought of the interpreter whose name I had never learned and the quiet, careful people who had fed and sheltered us and listened to us when they had no reason to trust any outsiders, especially one with arm spines.  
  
"A little magic, a little mystery, and a lot of mutton stew," Harper said, from behind me.  
  
I thought of the white stone towers built into the cliffs of Canyon De Chelly. "We ... went home, and they took us in."  
  
As we reached the long passageway to the outside, I turned to look back. Boudicca stood in the doorway, with her back to me. She had bound her hair into a heavy braid and was taking out her long knife as the door swung closed.  
  
Dylan said quietly, "I'm not going to ask."  
  
I shook my head. "It is our tradition that the matriarchs deal justice. When they take it into their own hands, the wisest thing is to be elsewhere."  
  
"You granted it."  
  
"You could have tried to stop me." By his expression I knew he would not have done so. I continued, a little more quietly, "Do you think I had a choice? Or wanted one?"  
  
His eyes held mine. "I have no regrets. None."  
  
"What of the Drago-Kazov who fled Ultima Thule?"  
  
"Dead, and verified so by Rommie."  
  
"Good." We started walking again. "I'd hate to think this excursion was a total waste of your time."  
  
He laughed harshly. "You know I like to meet new people and explore fun places."  
  
The outer rooms held fewer bodies than I'd expected, but about as much blood; I suspected the bodies would be taken elsewhere by the local residents, so that the rooms could be cleaned and reused for better purposes. We moved slowly, for I wanted to leave on my feet and not be carried like a sack of grain. Dylan and Paris kept me from falling, for I still felt dizzy from the sonic explosion Harper had set off in my head, let alone from the beating.  
  
"Harper, what was that ... noise?" I asked.  
  
"Advanced weaponry, courtesy of Seamus Zelazny Harper." He sounded as obnoxiously cheerful as ever, though Beka was nearly carrying him. "It's a little old circuit board chip that vibrates at a really interesting frequency when it's held near a data port like mine. I'm sorry I couldn't give you more warning."  
  
"You're forgiven." Charlemagne walked with us as guard, along with half a dozen Jaguars I had not met who accorded us proper respect. "I'll have to keep an eye on you, Harper. You're a dangerous man."  
  
"It's the company I keep," Harper said.  
  
"I like dangerous men. They're the only ones worth talking with." Charlemagne smiled sweetly. "And, by the way, congratulations on the latest addition to your Pride."  
  
I tried to turn around, but the hall was wide enough that they came forward. "I suppose you're going to keep me in suspense until we reach the ship?"  
  
"No, no, I'm treacherous, not cruel," Charlemagne said. "You have twins, a boy and a girl, and my little sister is doing very well. And I'm not quite sure I want to know how you did it, but I think their hair will set the new fashion in a few years."  
  
"I'm almost afraid to ask," Harper said.  
  
"Oh, it's nothing that scary," Beka said. "They seem to have been born with my kind of nanobots, and they're changing their coloring like chameleons -- hair and skin both. Trance said she's checked them over and they're very healthy, but that it's a little startling to try to scan someone who decides, all of a sudden, to turn a different color."  
  
"How different?" Visions of miniature Trances with arm spikes made my head throb.  
  
"The usual range, not anything outre, or whatever that might mean these days," Charlemagne said. "And you must admit, it would be a startlingly good survival adaptation to be able to resemble one's background."  
  
I only glanced at him, but it made him chuckle all the way back to the Maru.  
  
"The interesting thing, though, is that they seem to be ... inspiring Trance." Beka's eyes twinkled.  
  
Harper looked deeply suspicious. "Inspiring Trance? What do you mean? My purple sparkly girl isn't purple and sparkly any more?"  
  
"Wait and see," she told him.  
  
As we reached the Maru, exhaustion and pain caught up with me. I sat down on Beka's old bunk and fell into unconsciousness.  
  


***

  
  
I opened my eyes to see Anjali working on my arms. I started to move, but could not. She responded to the flash of my eyes.  
  
"I have a nerve block on from here down," she touched the base of my neck, "so that you won't have to suffer while I work. Don't fight it, hero." She winked at me. "You make pretty babies. Any chance we can cooperate on that, some time?"  
  
There was no way to know where Dylan was. I pretended not to hear her.  
  
"All right, I shouldn't be teasing you while I work. Bad doctor, no kaffe. We can talk later." She tutted over the state of my arms. "I will tell you that if you do as I say you will suffer no loss of sensation or skill with your arms, but you will have to do physical therapy to keep the spines limber while they heal. Nanobots can only go so far with us; if they rebuilt too much they would anchor your spines firmly to your ulna, and make it much more difficult for you to fight. We can't have that, now, can we?"  
  
If I lacked the strength to discuss courtship and mating, I surely was tired. I tried to smile, a little, and must have managed to do it satisfactorily, for she smiled back just as I fell asleep again.  
  
When I awoke, I could move my head and shoulders, and Anjali was gone. In her place sat someone I couldn't recall seeing before. If someone from the planet had come to the ship, why was she sitting in the med deck reading a flexy? She was attractive, strictly speaking, though dressed in a combination of leather armor and gauze that made me doubt her understanding of practical weaponry. She looked up at me and smiled. "Oh, you're awake. Rommie, please tell Ygraine that Tyr's feeling better."  
  
"Trance?" It had to be her. No one else had that voice, but even the voice had changed, deepened, as if she had aged a decade within the past few days. Neither did that account for the long red curls tumbling down to her shoulders, or the traces of gold and bronze in her skin.  
  
"Yes." She scanned my temperature and held a cup of water up for me to drink.  
  
"But --"  
  
"I grew up. It happens." She shrugged. "I fell asleep and slept for several days, and when I woke up I looked like this, and my old clothes didn't feel right so I found these."  
  
"Very creative."  
  
"Oh, I'm not the only one who's been creative around here." Her eyes sparkled, and I could see the girl I'd known for two years peeking out of the woman's eyes. "Wait until you see what you've done. Oh, I know, it was a group effort, I've seen the genetic patterns, but they're yours, aren't they?"  
  
"Absolutely." I could not wait to be back with my children, though it would be a few days before I could sit on the floor and let them climb on me without pain. Between them, Anjali and Trance had healed the whip weals and cuts, and speeded the healing of bruises -- all a minor matter on this med deck -- but there still remained a touch of soreness, the sort that made me catch my breath if I moved the wrong way.  
  
"See?" Trance stepped aside as the door opened. "They're very pretty."  
  
Ygraine walked in with a baby on each arm and a smile large enough to embrace a universe. She stopped at my bedside and said, "They don't weigh much. I think you can hold both of them, if Trance says it won't hurt your arms."  
  
"It won't," Trance put in quickly, from behind them. Wise girl. I would have held them anyway and dealt with the problems later.  
  
Ygraine laid first one bundle and then the other in my arms, neither one as long as my forearm, and both sleeping peacefully. It still overwhelmed me, this feeling of holding the future in my hands, a living future that contained the best of myself and those I loved. I closed my eyes, the emotion threatening to leak. When I opened them again, the child on my right arm had awaked and was looking at me with eyes that started blue and went to brown as its skin went from cream to rose to my own brown.  
  
"That's Sikander," his mother said fondly, "and this is Grania."  
  
"Good names, both. Do they do ... this ... all the time? It's a bit startling."  
  
"Believe me, we were surprised, too. Karla thinks it's a byproduct of some of the genetic retooling she did -- we wanted to make sure this child bore more of your genes than just the Kodiak marker. She's checking to see if this is a mutation that will carry through or one that will simply exist within this generation."  
  
Grania awoke and yawned mightily, her little fists clenched. She surveyed me with interest and immediately reached for my chin; I had not had opportunity to trim my beard while we were on the planet. I lifted her a little so she could reach -- there is little a child that young could do to annoy me, and playing with my hair was a prime sport with the older ones -- and as she touched it the texture of her hair changed. It curled and went darker, though not as dark as Sikander's. Her skin stayed pale until she tilted her head a little, and then a rainbow of pastels washed over her, ending with pale sunwashed gold.  
  
"They're beautiful," I breathed, and Ygraine leaned in for me to kiss her. Sikander grabbed at her pale hair and his went pale in stripes as he played with it.  
  
"Hey, you're meeting the kids!" Harper strolled in, looking only a little the worse for our adventure. "When do you want to have the claiming ceremony?"  
  
"After dinner." I raised an eyebrow at Ygraine, who nodded. "I suspect that Boudicca is planning something."  
  
"She sure is." Harper shook his head. "She chased me out of the kitchen and wouldn't even let me swipe anything to nibble. Fortunately, I had my stash of Sparky Cola in the workshop."  
  
"Sparky, the cure for all ills," Ygraine mocked him gently.  
  
"Hey, it gives me stamina, and I don't hear either of you complaining about that."  
  
My arms were growing sore, and I was afraid of dropping them. "Harper, would you --"  
  
"Come here, you little darling." Harper took Grania and she immediately changed to match his own blue and blond coloring. "Yes, you are such a looker. You're going to break every Nietzschian boy's heart in a few years. Hell, why stop with the Nietzschians?"  
  
Ygraine took Sikander back. "Rest now, until dinner. You can tell the tale of your travels, and we can celebrate your return."  
  
"Is anyone else invited to this dinner of ours?" I asked.  
  
"My brother is coming, as is Paris." She gave me a curious glance. "You think I should invite Dylan."  
  
"I think it would be proper."  
  
"All right. Should I tell him what's on the menu?"  
  
"I don't know. What, precisely, is Boudicca preparing?"  
  
Ygraine winked at me. "Haggis."  
  
"And I suppose this haggis will have at least some of the same ingredients as in the recipe I found in the computer? Lamb, for instance?"  
  
She considered judiciously. "Certainly it will have some of them."  
  
"Then tell him if he asks, but discreet." We exchanged glances, and she sighed. "Or ask Morgan to explain it to him. He's not Nietzschian, and even if he were, he wouldn't have to partake."  
  
Ygraine shook her head, her long fair hair falling around her shoulders. "The man is married to Jaguars and the nearest ally to Charlemagne. His great-nephew is Charlemagne's acknowledged heir. You explain to him how he's not as Nietzschian as he might want to be, and I'll go help with dinner."  
  
I played with the ends of her long hair, and tickled the baby's nose with it. Sikander gurgled happily. "I take it that Dylan's marital situation has been ... remedied since we left?"  
  
Ygraine's smile was wicked. "At one point during the negotiations he needed a break. We made him take it, and we made sure he enjoyed it and learned from it. You might say we convened an impromptu session of the Sylphidium."  
  
Ah. "We?"  
  
"Oh, Paris and Beka kept an eye on the planet, and Trance minded the babies after she woke up."  
  
"It sounds as if you had a great deal more fun than I had." I shook my head. "Although, they do say that ages saps stamina."  
  
"They also say that my brother's an ineffectual fop, but those who said it have long since died. Of natural causes."  
  
"Naturally." We smiled at each other. "So, an enjoyable time was had by all. Am I to expect to welcome another shieldbrother into the pride? We'll have to get a larger bed."  
  
Ygraine shook her head, tossing her hair back over her shoulder. "I don't think so. You don't have a rival, and neither does Harper. I suspect Dylan will continue to be a husband of the Jaguar Pride, not an adjunct of Kodiak." She dimpled. "Besides, he takes up far too much room in bed."  
  


***

  
  
Harper came back, ostensibly to help me get to dinner.  
  
"Stop that," I said, irked when he tried to support me. "I'm capable of walking on my own."  
  
"Sure you are, big guy. I'm just here for decoration." He pulled my head down and kissed me. "And light entertainment."  
  
"No objections here." He tasted of honey and spices. "I think you've been raiding the kitchen again."  
  
"Guilty as charged."  
  
We rounded a corner on the slanting deck, and I put a hand against the wall to steady myself. It felt so good to be on my feet again, even if the inside of my skull didn't always agree. But the pain was steadily decreasing, which made up for the occasional dizzyness.  
  
Morgan stepped out of our quarters and came toward us. "Ah, there you are." She handed Harper his smallest welder, the one he'd taken to Earth. "Thank you."  
  
Harper turned it in his hand; the tool appeared to be a little more battered and worn than before. "It worked for you? Looks like it needs repair."  
  
"It did just fine." Morgan's level gaze seemed to unnerve him. "Do you want to ask how it got that way?"  
  
Harper considered. "Yeah. I want to know."  
  
She seemed to choose her words carefully. "When we were done with Xenophon, we welded the doors and windows to that room shut from the outside, warned everyone away, and blasted the building to hell. I didn't realize it had fallen out of my pocket after the welding, but I know it's your favorite so I went back and dug it out of the rubble for you."  
  
"Gee, thanks." Harper hugged her. "You didn't have to go to all that trouble."  
  
"Yes, I did," she told him solemnly. "You're one of us. I didn't want to be careless about you, or your tools."  
  
"Next time, just get me another one over at Dallas Drift, okay? They're not that expensive."  
  
"Okay." She hugged him back, holding him with strong arms, then turned and kissed me. "It's good to have you home, husbands."  
  


***

  
  
Dinner was delicious; I would not have expected otherwise. Boudicca explained the haggis by telling a story of how Wallace Bolivar, her great-grandfather, enjoyed a ceremonial recreation of a Highland dinner after winning a great battle. I noticed that Dylan ate heartily, evidently enjoying himself, though Harper, after one taste, indulged himself on side dishes and passed off the main course. When he caught my eye, he smiled. Harper was never an innocent.  
  
While we were toying with desserts -- cookies and honeycake made from an older recipe than the haggis -- Dylan got to his feet. "I'd like to make a toast. To the Andromeda, and all who live on her, and to the final end of the Magog war."  
  
"Here, here," Charlemagne said, clinking his glass against Dylan's. "You know, this is the first time I can remember when I could sit among my family and friends and not have to worry about an attack from the Drago-Kazov. It's a lovely feeling."  
  
"Yes, it is," Boudicca said, not without a side glance at me. "For once, I think we can say that justice has truly been served in the universe."  
  
The women of Kodiak and Jaguar nodded and smiled.  
  
I jumped right in. "I would agree. Captain Hunt, what's our next quest to be?"  
  
"Whatever the Commonwealth needs us to do." He grinned, and suddenly looked more like Paris than I'd ever seen before. "I think the Commonwealth needs us to take a vacation."  
  


***

But before we could consider vacation, we had a debt to pay to the people who had put snipers around every Dragan outpost and tossed long-out-of-date explosives into barracks in order to buy us time. No one had died in the village on the surface, we'd learned; it had mainly been there to keep the Dragans from investigating the canyon more thoroughly. But the canyon's homes were full of people who had come for refuge, or who wanted to know what was happening in more detail than could be said in brief radio transmissions.

This time, we left Rommie's holo-self minding the ship and brought everyone down to the canyon -- not only because there was no other way to show how much our trust in these people had been fulfilled, but because I wanted everyone in Kodiak Pride to see the land from which at least some of us had come, and to meet the people who had accepted the odd alliance of myself and Harper as a harbinger of better things.

"Bring food," I told Rommie, "as a gift. Meat, cheese, vegetables, whatever we have."

Trance looked up from where she played with the children. "Would they like some of the fruit from our little orchard?"

"Yes, and the seeds to grow it as well. They will be treasured."

Harper could not fit us all into the Kali Ma, so we landed out in the open in the Eureka Maru, its hold loaded with gifts of food, medicine and technology, whatever the people would accept.

Tall Bear stepped forward from the crowd who had awaited our arrival, and said something in such a thick idiom that Hawk Feather choked a little before passing it on.

"He said this is a new day in history, when you have given us so much and asked for nothing back. This has not happened for so long, if ever."

I had not expected to hear the formal tone in translation, but it was so clear that I took pains to use it in my reply. "We have fought together; we are allies. And we will help you rebuild, if you wish it." I made the offer knowing that Beka would gladly fill the Maru's hold with timber for houses, or stone, or anything else they might want, because freeing the earth from the Dragans had made Harper so happy.

"You have brought your beautiful family to meet us, to eat with us." The old man smiled. "We will talk." He reached up to touch my shoulder. "You could have stayed in space. You could have left."

"I promised you the remedy for the Magog, and I have brought it." I nodded toward Trance Gemini, who stood in the center of a crowd of women, having used the pressure injector on herself to show that it did not hurt, and was now dispensing doses of anti-Magog serum to everyone. "And she can talk to your scientists about making more, so that no one on this planet ever needs to live in fear of them again."

My wives and Dylan's were sitting around the fires with the women of Earth, talking about children and cooking and admiring the beauty of the cloth on the looms and the pottery that had been brought out to show them. Paris and Harper were talking with the men, but as I watched they joined the older children in some sort of improvised game, kicking a leather-covered ball. The Maru had been unpacked, and Beka was looking at the houses and talking with a small crowd about repairs and --

"It is good to have peace," Tall Bear said in ship's language, slowly. "And friends."

I drew a long breath and let it out. "This is what peace feels like. I had forgotten."

Tall Bear smiled, showing well-worn teeth, and I wondered how old he could be, how much he remembered. "Come. We will sit in the shade and watch the children, and you can tell me about the worlds I have not seen."

And I did.

  
  
We stayed for two weeks, ferrying goods back and forth among communities, helping refugees, setting up trade routes. The records kept by the Dragans were turned over to Charlemagne, who would make sure the rest of the known universe knew what they had done here, and what they had had to pay for it. Much of the time we simply moved people back and forth across the planet, helping set up communications along trade routes known by the names of places that no longer existed. In another life, I could have been happy simply to do that, but I am still a man whose pride lives on shipboard instead of on my own planet.  
  
Tall Bear was a good listener; he heard much that was said only in the space between words. His ship-speech was oddly pronounced and sometimes slow, but it was clear that he had asked Hawk Feather to interpret for the sake of diplomacy, rather than need; I could honor that.  
  
"You do not speak of your home," he said quietly, after we had been there a week. "Dragans took it, you said."  
  
"Only I survived them, when they killed my planet."  
  
He nodded. "We will not speak of what is owed to you, but you have a home here, should you ever want it, friend."  
  
"As you will have, when I find my own home out there." I poured him more of the fruit juice that Trance had made from the apples and pears and grapes from the ship. Beyond us, in the most sheltered area with the best soil, tiny slips of fruit trees were being tended, and a small boy sat and played flute near them, perhaps to encourage their growth.  
  
Tall Bear nodded. "My grandson's grandson. Perhaps he will come with me when we visit your home."  
  


***

Perhaps it was the warmth of the welcome in Canyon de Chelly that made me feel so bereft when we were back on the ship. It was not that I was longing for solitude -- in a ship this size, there are always places to go -- but that feeling the red earth beneath my feet had made me long for a place of my own, where my feet would touch land, not metal decks. And so I wandered into the old crew quarters, as I had not done for some time.

Despite the sale of ship's goods early on, some decks had remained almost untouched, even after several years. Dylan and I might run through them for exercise, but the rooms had been left alone, partly as storage and partly, I thought, because Dylan at heart did not want to lose every remnant of the Commonwealth he'd known. During the sale, it's possible that each of us thought another had dealt with them; perhaps we were interrupted too often by the claims of other necessary work such as fighting intruders or trading for food or seeking yet another ally to fight the Magog.

Even b  
If he needed an apology from me, I was willing to give it. He'd certainly repaid me by rescuing us; if there were any balance to be made up, it was my turn to make it. "Dylan --"

"I was wrong." The words seemed to slip out of him, sideways, like dinner plates sliding off a stack and smashing on the floor. "I was wrong about you, and what happened with you, and I was wrong in taking out my anger about that on everyone else."

"That's past," I told him.

Being Dylan, he didn't listen. "And while you were away, I slept with your wives. Now, you can't tell me that's not a serious matter."

"It's a very serious matter, if it was something they didn't want." I leaned back in my chair. "Of course, if that had happened, you wouldn't be sitting there telling me this." I cocked my head at him, and he nodded slowly. "Now, as I understand it, you were the one who had little choice in the matter. Do you have any complaint?"

Startled, he blushed. Dylan, blushing rosy pink, was a rare sight. In the past, he'd been as likely to blush or startle as I was, which is to say not at all.

"Complain? About them? No, no ..." His voice trailed off. I raised an eyebrow; he knew he could speak freely to me of mating. "I -- it was wonderful."

"In that case it's not a serious matter at all." I shrugged. He looked unconvinced, and still a bit ill at ease. "Dylan, Dylan. Haven't you learned by now that with Nietzschians the choice is always up to the woman? If your women, and mine, decided that the best thing for all concerned was to share themselves with you, it's not my business."

His brow furrowed as if he were trying to remember an obscure verb form in some language he studied as an infant. "But aren't Nietzschians supposed to want to further the spread of their own genes as opposed to anyone else's?"

What a time for him to want to discuss philosophy and the ubermench. "I know you don't consider yourself inferior, and I'm sure none of the women think of you that way. Several of them are distant descendents of your brother, after all."

"But --"

"And if you're thinking of Boudicca and Morgan, they were pregnant by me before we came to Earth." I watched him think about that. "You might get your chance later on, if they wish it. Would you stand in the way if Nerissa, for example, asked for me?"

He considered. "When you put it that way, no." He ran his hands through his hair again. "Do you have any idea just how strange all of this is to me, or any idea about the culture I came from before the fall of the Commonwealth?"

"I can guess the first, a little. About the second, I have no clue."

He really did look shaken, now that the blush had worn off. I tipped my head back. "Ship, send kaffe for two to this location."

A shimmer in the corner. "Kaffe for two. Anything else?"

Dylan shook his head. "Just the kaffe, and privacy."

"Privacy mode engaged." The shimmer vanished.

I waited until the bot brought the kaffe service on a tray, complete with some small cookies that Olivia had baked -- she was the only one aboard who really liked cardamom -- before I spoke. "Would you like to tell me about it?"

"I grew up in the human quarter there. My father worked in the Imperial gardens; we weren't wealthy, but we had what we needed and the opportunities seemed endless. The Vedrans treated us well, and were considerate of our differences. I learned a lot about how to treat people of other systems from them, and of course I met people from everywhere in the known worlds when I went to the academy." The words came out slowly, as if he'd spent a lot of time looking at pieces of a puzzle he was only now beginning to fit together into a pattern. "And that was the first time I lived in a place that was not sequestered, away from where other races lived and worked."

This wasn't what I'd expected. "They kept you in a ghetto?"

"It was never called that, and certainly nobody would have considered us to be deprived or lesser -- but I grew up knowing that because I was human I wasn't welcome in a lot of places on Tarn Vedra, even though my father was the assistant to the Empress's chief gardener. One reason I made the top of the class in the academy was that I wanted to see what other places looked like, on my own planet."

I mused on this. The kaffe was a little stale; I'd have to shop for a better supplier, now that we had so many on the ship who liked it. "On my homeworld, I could go anywhere I wanted," I said slowly. "We were encouraged to explore, to learn to survive in any circumstance. Once, when I was about ten years old, I went diving for pearls with my older brother Erik. The pearls there were immense, the size of my fist at that age, but it was a challenge to get them away from the creatures that created them. I was under water without air for eight minutes, getting myself loose from one of them, before Erik could rescue me. I still had the pearl in my hand when I reached the surface. When I drew my first breath of air I felt the shock of it reach my lungs -- and my hand loosened, and the pearl dropped, and it fell right back where it had been before. When I caught my breath, I dived again and brought it back for my mother."

"I would've loved to see that. You weren't overprotected, were you?"

I'd have to show Olivia more of my recipes; she was turning into an excellent recreational baker. "I'd say not. We learned to take responsibility for ourselves."

"I think ... as an individual I wasn't overprotected, either, but as a group the humans on Tarn Vedra were. We weren't allowed to go to the most dangerous parts of the planet, and it made us both foolhardy and cautious. And where people live in that way, I've noticed, their sexuality tends to acquire official ... boundaries. Limits. Some things were not done. Order had to be kept. Rules couldn't be broken, because if they were and the Vedrans heard of it -- and they always heard -- we might be tossed out of paradise."

"Let me get this straight. The Vedrans, who live with four males to each female, would have objected to you mating with more than one woman who chose you?"

He shook his head. "The Vedrans didn't care what our arrangements were, but they valued order above all else, and our obedience to their views was the price we paid for living there. So the human society tended to be self-policing, and any who showed tendencies to, say, disturb the order were gently pointed toward the exit."

"It doesn't sound as if you liked them much. The Vedrans, I mean." I refilled his cup from the carafe. "That's not a crime. I don't like most groups in general either, though I may find some individuals interesting or likeable."

Dylan stood, stretching, and walked to the wall and back. "It's possible that the entire original purpose for having humans in Imperial High Guard was to get us troublemakers off the planet." He laughed. "Get them out into the Commonwealth to make their own place, wherever they can."

"I can't say I argue with that in theory, but what does that have to do with my wives and yours?" I watched him walk back and forth. "It's three centuries later. You obviously don't have to worry any more about whether the Vedrans approve of who you sleep with; we haven't seen a Vedran since before Witchhead. And they would certainly approve of the women making the choices."

"Give me a minute. I'm still putting this together in my head." Dylan turned toward me, putting his mug down on its tray. "I think what I'm trying to say is that I never had to think for myself about these kinds of things before now, because I still had those mental ... guardrails, for lack of a better word ... that told me I had to maintain order, and that going against the accepted way would upset the Vedrans. When the Maru brought Andromeda out of the black hole, what's the first thing I did?"

"Aside from blowing up my munitions stash and disabling all my cyborgs?" I grinned at him. "You enlisted us in reforming the Commonwealth."

"The Commonwealth's a good idea all by itself, and I think you agree with me on that." He raised an eyebrow, and I shrugged a shoulder: yes, of course, or I wouldn't be here. So? "But I didn't decide to recreate it because it was a good idea, or just to reshape the universe to my will."

"You did it to please the Vedrans?" I couldn't help smiling. "Dylan Hunt, you're such a fool, and so am I for having been enlisted so easily in your folly."

"And look where it's gotten us -- married, settled, the Andromeda a home ship as well as a battle cruiser, trying to make the known worlds safer." He sat on the edge of another crate (property of Lancer Corporal Aelfric Bourbon, who spent his off hours in studying archeology) and smiled at me. "Now, though, I think I'm doing it for myself, and for the children."

"I approve of that, as you know." But I saw the expectancy in his face. "And?"

"I wanted to ask you something else."

Was I mistaking that expression? I hoped not.

"Is it only the women who may choose?"

"Not at all." This was absurd. Three words to reply to a simple question and my voice had dropped an octave. It would sink through the hull of the ship and be halfway to the next planet if that occurred again. "Should I ask who you had in mind?" I stood, giving my vocal apparatus another few feet of distance above Deck 50B.

"Well, I can tell you it wasn't Paris. Oh, he's a nice guy, a capable engineer, and all -- but I think I'm just not narcissistic enough to want to make love with a mirror image of myself at 22."

"And I suppose that means ... hmm. Why don't you tell me what it means?"

"I'd rather show you."

He had forgotten none of the techniques of tadronnisich that I'd taught him; his skills had, actually, improved. But I pushed him away carefully before he could take me to the edge.

"Have you forgotten what I said the last time?"

He tilted his head curiously. "That it would be the only 'free' session? No, I didn't forget." His eyebrows drew together. "You're saying something else, aren't you?"

I hesitated, then nodded. It would have to come out some day; better now, when he was in a good mood -- and comparable sanity -- than at most other times we'd had recently. "Nonreproductive mating among Nietzschians who are neither youths nor precise equals in status is always a political act."

"Are you saying we are not equals?"

He started to pull back. I put a hand on his shoulder to keep him there. "I'm not saying that at all. If I didn't consider you an equal, I wouldn't have suggested teaching you before. But I think you should consider what you're getting into before taking on any of the rest of us."

Dylan froze, then seemed to force himself to relax. "Just what do you mean by political?

I glanced away from him for a second, wishing for once that Nietzsche had not eliminated the possibility of divine intervention from the universe. When I looked back, he was not quite frowning. I chose my words carefully. "We have been known, upon occasion, to employ it as an opportunity for making a contract. In such a contract, the parties involved are to be considered equals in all ways, for the duration of the contract only."

"I suppose the contract duration lasts longer than the event itself?" He was thinking on his feet again. "Such as from the time you met privately with Charlemagne on this ship and, say, when we found you in the Dragans' prison?"

Ah. Good. He had not learned anything of my other contract, the shikastri with Paris.

"Actually, that one is still continuing, and will do so officially until Charlemagne has located a new homeworld for Kodiak Pride." I raised an eyebrow. "You shouldn't ignore your profit from the matter, either."

"My profit?" He looked frankly skeptical.

"Wives. Children. Do you think any of that would have been possible, regardless of your bloodline, if I had not smoothed the way?"

"Is this another of those situations in which I benefit from what benefits you?"

"If you wish to put it that way."

Dylan put his hands on my shoulders. "Is there any reason you can think of that would keep us from doing whatever we want to in here?"

"No."

"Then ..."

He kissed me again, brought me almost to the edge -- oh, yes, he'd been practicing and with someone who knew what she was doing, probably Boudicca -- then stopped and dropped to his knees in front of me. "This is not a contract," he said as he unfastened me. "This is for my pleasure."

"And you think I'd object?"

His hand wrapped warmly around my cock, he glanced up quizzically. "What do you get from this, other than the obvious?"

"Nothing."

"Fine." He bent his head and opened his mouth, and I nearly swooned.

Dylan's mouth was larger than Harper's, his jaw wider. He took me in further, into the heat and wetness until I could no longer restrain myself and spent, and he sucked me dry. The slide of the door opening behind him made me open my eyes and realize that my fingers were still threaded through the thick silk of his hair. I let it go with an effort.

Beka had opened the door. "Harper told me I might find ... you here. Well, well."

Dylan rose to his feet, with admirable aplomb. "Yes, Beka?"

"Had you decided where the ship is going for vacation? We've got a few suggestions ... if you're not too busy vacationing ahead of time."

"Ah. Um. Well --"

"The captain was just leaving," I said, having taken the opportunity of the shelter behind his back to set myself, and my clothing, in order.

"Actually, yes, I was." Dylan looked as if he meant to be especially charming. "Tyr and I were just discussing philosophy --"

"I'm sure." Beka stepped closer to him, shutting the door behind her. "And I might even believe that if you'd wiped your chin off." She swept her fingers across his chin, catching a small drop of either my fluids or his saliva or both on her fingertips. "I'm not even going to ask what was going on; it's none of my business." She rubbed her fingertips together thoughtfully.

"True," I said. Nietzschians do not blush. No, they do not. Mating is not a matter for embarrassment.

"However --" She tried to pin me to the wall with a blue gaze that I ignored even as I could feel it sliding over my skin. "It might be a good idea for you to continue your 'philosophy' discussion later. And you might want to check on the correct form for that mode of discourse, Dylan; from what I noticed, your verbs were a little confused." She turned on her heel and stopped at the door. "Oh, I almost forgot -- you're both wanted on the obs deck." Then she left.

The door slid shut.

"Has anyone ever won an argument with her?" Dylan muttered.

"I'd have to ask Harper, but I doubt it."

"At least I'm not alone."

***

  
  
Does Dylan even begin to realize just what a conundrum he is?  
  
He was hesitant at first to accept Charlemagne as a member of the alliance -- I overheard him say something about Churchill and Stalin joining to defeat Hitler. The comparison, though, was more precise than he may have thought. Churchill had as much blood on his hands as Stalin, thanks to his repression of the Irish rebellion in 1916, but fewer people seemed to notice it, and it was twenty years in the past when he faced Stalin, DeGaulle and Roosevelt across a table and agreed to an alliance..  
  
Dylan became Death's messenger when he pressed the control that slaughtered a hundred thousand of my people in an instant during the battle of Witchhead. No Nietzschian has ever done anything like that.  
  
I am not easily frightened or awed; I do not surrender myself to such feelings. In his company, this has happened far too often, because he is willing to do what no Nietzschian would do -- gamble his own survival and that of others on walking straight into traps and turning them around on his enemies, as he did when he called fire down on our position to make Cuchulain abandon his attack on hospital ships.  
  
Was he trying, even then, to become superman? Was this his attempt to shape the world to his will, a purely human and worthy endeavor, or was it an attempt to become the next possible thing to a god in the known worlds? Time after time he has gone beyond what I would consider sanity -- beyond what Beka and Harper also consider sanity -- to get his way. It's as if he is trying to make up for not being born Nietzschian.  
  
And yet ...  
  
This last encounter of ours makes me wonder whether he has been adapting to us or adapting us to suit himself. I don't believe I've ever heard him apologize like that to anyone else. He will change his mind, or say, "You're right," but he will not say that he is wrong. If he actually had to deal with an authority greater than his own -- a Vedran, perhaps, if any still exist, or an admiral in his original Commonwealth -- would he take orders as he always did?  
  
Or was this way of adapting his orders to suit his will something he did in the long-ago past as well? I find it hard to believe that the old Commonwealth would have tolerated it. If he were not the leader of the new Commonwealth's military, as captain of its flagship, he would find it much harder now, as well.  
  
I am the only one who has consistently stood up to him, who has told him when he was wrong, who has questioned his actions and his motives, and he has made me vulnerable to him by opening himself to me and showing me something I could not avoid seeing -- a need for contact that I could not deny.  
  
He is so nearly my friend, as much as any man not family. I dare not let myself trust him completely; he is too dangerous to me and to all that is mine. In Dylan Hunt I cannot place my trust, though I follow his orders, just as I did not put my trust in Rev Bem's Divine. Nor will I trust in chaos to sort out the good from the evil within him.  
  
("That Nietzsche! Always a comedian!" he said, as we insanely assaulted the fortress of Acheron and took its control from the Dragans. He sent bombs at our own position that day, terrifying me even as I held my weapon steady at our enemies. They gave way for their lives; he did not, and prevailed.)  
  
My ancestors engineered my genes selectively to breed for strength, courage, intelligence, cunning and caution -- the instincts of survival. Perhaps when his parents combined their genes, giving him the advantage of heavy-world strength, someone should have intervened to add a mild recessive that would give him the ability to fear death.  
  
But fear of death may be too much to expect of the only survivor of the time before the Dark Night. When one has lost everything, there's little left to fear. Now that he has regained much of what he lost, including a family and a place of respect in the world, perhaps he will also regain that necessary fear that is vital to survival, as it breeds caution.  
  
Caution, however, has never been Dylan's middle name.  
  


***

  
  
"Oh, there you are," Harper said. "We had an idea about this vacation of yours."  
  
"We?" I asked.  
  
He waved a hand to include the group: my wives, Dylan's, his household. "How about a nice peaceful vacation on Serenity Atoll?"  
  
"Serenity Atoll?" Dylan sounded dubious. "I hate to ask, but can we afford it?"  
  
"Oh, please." Harper shrugged. "If the Commonwealth can't manage to pay for its founder to have a little rest and relaxation, the universe is in much worse shape than I think it is."  
  
Beka waved a credit chip. "And if you really feel the need for money, I still have this nice little unlimited credit chip that my uncle gave me. I haven't even worn the finish off it yet."  
  
"All right, I get the picture." Dylan shushed Beka. "Rommie? Take us there."

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this back in ... what, 2000? And it was read by betas and suggestions were made and it was rewritten ... and then the world changed in 2001, and I just couldn't find an ending for it more than what exists. I rewrote it again in 2005, and still it sits. So, here it is, as it is. If you beta-read this and would like acknowledgement please email me and I will add your name (and thank you very much!); if you beta-read it and would rather not be acknowledged, no problem. I hope the further adventures of Tyr and Harper are worth reading, even if not as polished as I would have liked them to be.
> 
> 'Ancient enemy' is the translation of the word 'anasazi', from (I think) the Dene language. If I am wrong in this, let me know and I will correct it.


End file.
